What are the ultimate motives that instigate individuals’ behavior? What are the aims of social perception? How can an individual’s behavior be described both from the perspective of the actor and from the perspective of an observer?

These are the basic questions that this book addresses using its proposed agency-communion framework. Agency (competence, assertiveness) refers to existence of an organism as an individual, to “getting ahead” and to individual goal-pursuit; communion (warmth, morality) refers to participation of an individual in a larger organism, to “getting along” and to forming bonds.

Each chapter is written by experts in the field and uses the agency communion framework to explore a wide variety of topics, such as stereotypes, self-esteem, personality, power, and politics. The reader will profit from the deep insights given by leading researchers. The variety of theoretical approaches and empirical contributions shows that the parsimonious and simple structure of two types of content in behavior, motives, personality, self-concept, stereotypes, and more helps to build an overarching frame to different phenomena studied in psychology.

https://www.routledge.com/Agency-and-Communion-in-Social-Psychology/Abele-Wojciszke/p/book/9781138570276

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Big Two of Agency and Communion as an overarching framework in psychology
   Andrea E. Abele and Bogdan Wojciszke
2. Connect and Strive to Survive and Thrive: The Evolutionary Meaning of Communion and Agency
   Todd Chan, Iris Wang, and Oscar Ybarra
3. Agency and communion in social cognition
   Bogdan Wojciszke and Andrea E. Abele
4. Warmth and Competence Are Parallels to Communion and Agency: Stereotype Content Mode
   Susan T. Fiske
5. Agency and Communion in Self-Concept and in Self-Esteem
   A. E. Abele and N. Hauke
6. Agentic and Communal Social Motives
   Kenneth D. Locke
7. The Big Two Dimensions of Desirability
   D. L. Paulhus
8. Agency and Communion in Grandiose Narcissism
   Jochen E. Gebauer and Constantine Sedikides
9. Agency and Communion: Their Implications for Gender Stereotypes and Gender Identities
   Sabine Sczesny, Christa Nater, and Alice H. Eagly
10. Dimensional Comparison Theory and the Agency–Communion Framework
    Friederike Helm and Jens Möller
11. The dimensional compensation model: Reality and strategic constraints on warmth and competence in intergroup perceptions
    Vincent Yzerbyt
12. Power, Self-Focus and the Big Two
    Aleksandra Cislak and Aleksandra Cichocka
13. The "Big Two" in Citizens’ Perception of Politicians
    Susanne Bruckmüller and Nicole Methner
14. Rethinking the nature and relation of fundamental dimensions of meaning
    Alex Koch and Roland Imhoff

Both Andrea E. Abele and Bogdan Wojciszke are the first winners of the prestigious EASP Moscovici Award (2017).

Andrea E. Abele is a professor at Friedrich-Alexander University (Erlangen, Germany). Her research interests are social cognition and the fundamental dimensions of social judgment and behavior. She has published about 220
articles. She is a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Science and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.

Bogdan Wojciszke is a professor at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Sopot, Poland). His research interests are social cognition and moral judgments and he has published 11 books and over 160 papers. He is a full member of Polish Academy of Science and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.