Wiggins

Wiggins' (1991) has developed a taxonomy of ideas about agency and communion. Wiggins' conception of agency involves power, mastery, and assertion. The opposite of agency is passivity, which involves weakness, failure, and submission. Communion involves intimacy, union, and solidarity. The opposite of communion is dissociation, which involves remoteness, disaffiliation, and hostility. Wiggins' (1991) placement of constructs under agency or communion is theoretical. More recently, Digman (1997) has derived two higher-order factors, using factor analysis on Big Five data, that correspond to Wiggins' conceptual coordinates of agency and communion. However, Digman's placement of constructs of other theorists (reflected in the Big Five table) differs somewhat from that of Wiggins.


Agency

Communion

World Views

Confucius

Utilitarian SphereMoral Sphere

Angyal (1941)

AutonomyHomonomy

Bakan (1966)

AgencyCommunion

Persons

Freud

Able to WorkAble to Love

Adler (1912, 1964)

Superiority StrivingSocial Interest

Horney (1937)

Moving against OthersMoving toward Others

Fromm (1941)

Separate IdentityOneness with World

Sullivan (1953)

Need for PowerNeed for Tenderness

Erikson (1950)

AutonomyBasic Trust

Hogan (1983)

Achieving StatusMaintaining Peer Popularity

McAdams (1985)

Power MotivationIntimacy Motivation

Language

Brown (1965)

Pronouns of PowerPronouns of Solidarity

White (1980)

Dominance / SubmissionSolidaarity / Conflict

Benjafield and Carson (1985)

Assured-Dominant WordsWarm-Friendly Words

Men and Women

Constantinople (1973)

Masculinity?Femininity?

Bem (1974)

MasculinityFemininity

Spence (1985)

Self-AssertionExpressiveness

Measurement of Interpersonal Behavior

Freedman et al. (1951)

Dominance / SubmissionAffiliation / Hostility

Foa and Foa (1974)

StatusLove

Norman (1963)

SurgencyAgreeableness

(This table is taken from Wiggins, 1991.)


References

Adler, A. (1912). The neurotic character. In H. L. Ansbacher & R. R. Ansbacher (Eds.) (1956), The individual psychology of Alfred Adler. New York: Harper.

Adler, A. (1964). Social interest: A challenge to mankind. New York: Putnam.

Angyal, A. (1941). Foundations for a science of personality. New York: Commonwealth Fund.

Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence: Isolation and communion in Western man. Boston: Beacon.

Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155-162.

Benjafield, J., & Carson, E. (1985). An historicodevelopmental analysis of the circumplex model of trait descriptive terms. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 4, 339-345.

Brown, R. (1965). Social psychology. New York: Free Press.

Constantinople, A. (1973). Masculinity-Femininity: An exception to a famous dictum? Psychological Bulletin, 80, 389-407.

Digman, J. M. (1997). Higher-order factors of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1246-1256.

Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

Foa, U. G., & Foa, E. B. (1974). Societal structures of the mind. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Freedman, M. B., Leary, T. F., Ossorio, A. G., & Coffey, H. S. (1951). The interpersonal dimension of personality. Journal of Personality, 20, 143-161.

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Avon Books.

Hogan, R. (1983). A socioanalytic theory of personality. In M. M. Page (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, 1982 (pp. 55-89). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. New York: Norton.

McAdams, D. P. (1985). Power, intimacy and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.

Norman, W. T. (1963). Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 574-583.

Spence, J. T. (1985). Gender identity and its implications for the concepts of masculinity and femininity. In T. B. Sonderegger (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, 1984 (pp. 59-95). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: Norton.

White, G. M. (1980). Conceptual universals in interpersonal language. American Anthropologist, 82, 759-781.

Wiggins, J. S. (1991). Agency and communion as conceptual coordinates for the understanding and measurement of interpersonal behavior. In W. M. Grove & D. Ciccetti (Eds.), Thinking clearly about psychology: Vol. 2. Personality and psychopathology (pp. 89-113). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.


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