The bigger one of the "Big Two"? Preferential processing of communal information

By A. Abele, Susanne Bruckmüller. 2011

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An important aim of person perception is to guide people in their actions towards others and an especially important question in this regard is whether to approach a target or not. A target's traits can be differentiated into the "Big Two" fundamental content dimensions of agency and communion. Four studies test the hypothesis that relative to agentic traits communal traits - which can also be conceptualized as "other-profitable" traits - are processed preferentially because they convey more information relevant for approach vs. avoidance decisions. Across four studies, we found consistent support for this preferential processing hypothesis. Communal trait words were recognized faster (Study 1) and categorized faster with regard to valence than agentic trait words (Study 2); communal traits were inferred faster from behavior descriptions than agentic traits (Study 3); and finally, communal traits were mentioned prior to agentic ones in spontaneous descriptions of another person (Study 4). Throughout these studies the stimuli's valence (positive or negative words or behaviors) did not moderate this processing speed advantage of communal information. Participants' responses in Study 4, however, were more valence-driven for the communion dimension than for the agency dimension.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e6f05239909dbe428f061e77a52ec0a6d20939c

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Citations in the corpus

New Routes to Recruiting and Retaining Women in STEM: Policy Implications of a Communal Goal Congruity Perspective (2015, background): “Furthermore, some evidence suggests that communal information about others is prioritized in social interactions (Abele & Bruckmüller, 2011).”
Implicit stereotyping against people with disability (2018, background): “In a similar way, Abele and Bruckmüller (2011) showed that participants were faster to recognize, categorize, or infer warmth items than competence items, suggesting that warmth items are preferentially processed on early stages of information processing.”
Investigating User Perception of Gender Bias in Image Search: The Role of Sexism (2018, background): “This theory is widely accepted by researchers of person perception [1] and the two dimensions appear to be culturally universal [2].”
Effects of Gender Stereotypes on Trust and Likability in Spoken Human-Robot Interaction (2018, methodology): “The implicit gender (personality) of the robot was modeled according to the ﬁndings of Abele and Bruckm¨uller (2011).”
On the importance of being moral: The Distinctive role of morality in social judgment (2014, background): “Indeed, communion traits are processed more rapidly than agency information at early stages of information processing (Abele & Bruckmuller, 2011; Ybarra, Chan, & Park, 2001).”