How does threat affect different types of people? Investigating a relationship between Big-Five personality and self-concept, and how threat may affect a self-concept network

In this exploratory project, we aim to draw connections between Big-5 personality, threat, and self-concept. In the experiment, participants first completed the Big-5 inventory of personality measuring openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, five mostly independent traits that form a broad picture of personality (John et al., 2008; John et al., 1991; Benet-Martinez & John, 1998). Next, participants were randomly assigned to a threat or non-threat condition. Threat was manipulated using mortality salience, a prompt in which participants were asked to write specifically about their bodily reaction to death, a domain non-specific threat (Rosenblatt et al., 1989). After the threat manipulation, self-concept measures were administered. Self-concept has been operationalized here as a network, adapting research on social networks to a self- and identity-based model. The self-concept network is created by having participants list 15 personal identities, rate each identity's importance, and then determine how related each identity is to the others. Similar to a social network, clusters emerge that determine which identities are most important to the self. During data coding, each of these identities were rated by two judges blind to condition as either agentic or communal. No significant results were found for threat as a main effect and for personality as a moderator of the relationship between threat and identities. However, people significantly listed more agentic identities than communal, and more agentic identities and higher agentic importance were marginally correlated with higher self-concept clarity and positive affect, possibly suggesting more comfort in understanding more self-focused identities. There was also a marginally significant increase in perceived importance of all identities and marginally significant increase in agentic identities after threat. In future research, we would like to replicate this research with more participants, different threat manipulations, more focused independent variables, and also explore differences in how people rate their own identities.No embargoAcademic Major: Psycholog

A hierarchy of personal agency for people with life-limiting illness

The purpose of the study was to discover how individuals diagnosed with a life-limiting illness experienced themselves as agents, even in the face of death. In this qualitative, multiple case study design four female outpatient hospice patients with terminal illnesses received humanistic counselling to explore their experiences of themselves and their illness. A graded set of 8 levels of personal agency emerged from analyses of the texts of their sessions, ranging from a passive, objectified Non-agentic mode to an active, autonomous Fully Agentic mode, with multiple subcategories representing further gradations within levels. Our results are consistent with guidelines for supportive and palliative care with advanced cancer, which specify that dying patients’ needs be assessed and that they be involved in decisions about their care

Exploring Rural Teachers\u27 Perceptions of the Achievement of Professional Agency in the Context of a School District Mandated Pedagogical Reform

This phenomenological study used the chordal triad of agency within the framework of agentic ecological theory to explore how four rural elementary teachers perceived their achievement of individual professional agency as they participated in a school district mandated pedagogical reform. Given the paucity of research on rural education, the study aimed to clarify how rural teachers understood district-imposed top-down mandates and how that understanding affected their sense of professional agency. Within the chordal triad eight major stages of agency emerged: (a) agentic acceptance; (b) agentic anticipation; (c) agentic alienation; (d) agentic amnesia; (e) agentic guilt; (f) agentic suppression; (g) agentic rejection; and (h) agentic accommodation. Important ecological factors included the need for differentiated professional development, the quality of the relationships between staff and the administrative team, and the conditions of the relationship networks between colleagues. This study sought to emphasize the strength of rural school communities and to highlight opportunities for rural school districts to draw on those strengths to empower rural teaching staff. Implications for this study suggested a need to examine the concept of distributed leadership within rural districts, to attend to the educational discourses within schools, to draw on and improve upon the strengths already inherent in rural communities, and, above all, to deliberately cultivate a true sense professional dignity so that rural teachers’ agentic practices may not just growth, but thrive

Verbs as linguistic markers of agency: The social side of grammar

open4Basic grammatical categories may carry social meanings irrespective of their semantic content. In a set of four studies, we demonstrate that verbs—a basic linguistic category present and distinguishable in most languages—are related to the perception of agency, a fundamental dimension of social perception. In an archival analysis of actual language use in Polish and German, we found that targets stereotypically associated with high agency (men and young people) are presented in the immediate neighborhood of a verb more often than non-agentic social targets (women and older people). Moreover, in three experiments using a pseudo-word paradigm, verbs (but not adjectives and nouns) were consistently associated with agency (but not with communion). These results provide consistent evidence that verbs, as grammatical vehicles of action, are linguistic markers of agency. In demonstrating meta-semantic effects of language, these studies corroborate the view of language as a social tool and an integral part of social perception.openFormanowicz, Magdalena; Roessel, Janin; Suitner, Caterina; Maass, AnneFormanowicz, Magdalena; Roessel, Janin; Suitner, Caterina; Maass, Ann

The Interactive Effects of Sex of a Sender and Gender Role on Liking and Perceived Competence in Online Email Communication

The purpose of the present study was to examine how evaluations of an email sender would be influenced by gender role and sex of the sender. It was hypothesized that male senders would be liked more and perceived as more competent than females and that agentic male and communal female senders would be liked more and perceived as more competent than communal male and agentic female senders, respectively. Senders would also be ranked in the following order from most positive scores to least: agentic males, communal females, agentic females, communal males. Using a 2 (sex of participants: male vs female) x 2 (sex of the sender: male vs female) x 2 (gender role: agentic vs communal) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) and data from 150 college students, it was found that there was no effect of sex of the sender and gender role to support the first three hypotheses. However, communal senders were found to be liked more and perceived as more competent than agentic senders. The results of this study suggest that requests and other interactions online be written using communal language

Explaining Influences on Career \u27Choice\u27 in Comparative Perspective

This study explores the influences on career choices of the MBA students from three countries at micro-individual, meso-institutional and relational and macro-structural levels, questioning the apparent dominance of ‘free choice’ in the context of persistent forms of structural constraints in career markets. The paper takes a critical perspective on career ‘choice’, acknowledging the contested nature of ‘choice’ and identifying career as a product of socially and historically situated choices which are negotiated through structural constraints The central hypothesis of the study is that ‘it is more likely for the MBA students to report micro-agentic or meso-instutional and relational rather than macro-structural conditions as key influences on their career choices’. The study draws on the findings of a cross-national survey involving Britain, Israel, and Turkey, using the career choice dimensions designed by Özbilgin and Healy (2003). Findings show that MBA students consider the impact of structural conditions as less significant on their career choices than their own human capital and capacity to make free choices. The study provides an understanding of the main cross-national diversities and similarities in reporting of influences on career ‘choice’, and brings to bare interesting theoretical and methodological insights

Groups in space: stereotypes and the spatial agency bias

"We propose that spatial imagery is systematically linked to stereotypic beliefs, such that more agentic groups are envisaged to the left of less agentic groups. This Spatial Agency Bias was tested in three studies. In Study 1, a content analysis of over 200 images of male-female pairs (including artwork, photographs, and cartoons) showed that males were over-proportionally presented to the left of females, but only for couples in which the male was perceived as more agentic. Study 2 (N = 40) showed that people tend to draw males to the left of females, but only if they hold stereotypic beliefs that associate males with greater agency. Study 3 (N = 61) investigated whether scanning habits due to writing direction are responsible for the Spatial Agency Bias. We found a tendency for Italian-speakers to position agentic groups (men and young people) to the left of less agentic groups (females and old people), but a reversal in Arabic speakers who tended to position the more agentic groups to the right. Together, our results suggest a subtle spatial bias in the representation of social groups that seems to be linked to culturally determined writing/reading habits." [author's abstract

Affective reactivity in agentic and affiliative extraversion

The affective-reactivity hypothesis holds that extraverts experience greater levels of positive affect in response to rewards than do introverts. This issue is complicated by the fact that extraversion is comprised of two major components of agency and affiliation. Agentic extraversion reflects social dominance, exhibitionism and achievement striving, whilst affiliative extraversion reflects being warm, affectionate, and valuing close relationships with others. Both components of extraversion have been found to be associated with particular forms of affective reactivity: agentic extraversion predicts positive activation in response to appetitive rewards, whilst affilaitve extraversion predicts warmth-affection in response to affiliative rewards. The aim of this thesis was to test affective reactivity in agentic and affiliative extraversion. Additional issues such as the role of cognitive appraisals in affective reactivity, and whether individual differences in reward sensitivity are also observable in physiological markers of emotion were also examined. Affective-reactivity was tested in response to social behaviours, mental imagery and film clips. It was predicted that agentic extraversion would predict positive activation in response to appetitive situations and that affiliative extraversion would predict warmth-affection and pleasure in response to affiliative situations. There was no support for the predictions regarding agentic extraversion, and affiliative extraversion was only found to predict pleasure and warmth-affection following affiliative mental imagery. The relationships between affiliative extraversion and affect were also found to be mediated by cognitive appraisals, and there was some evidence that affiliative extraversion is associated with zygomaticus activation in response to an affiliative film clip. In sum, support for the affective reactivity hypothesis in agentic and affiliative extraversion was limited. Issues for future researchers to consider include how different experimental methods differentially induce emotion, and how agentic and affiliative extraversion should be conceptualised and measured.The affective-reactivity hypothesis holds that extraverts experience greater levels of positive affect in response to rewards than do introverts. This issue is complicated by the fact that extraversion is comprised of two major components of agency and affiliation. Agentic extraversion reflects social dominance, exhibitionism and achievement striving, whilst affiliative extraversion reflects being warm, affectionate, and valuing close relationships with others. Both components of extraversion have been found to be associated with particular forms of affective reactivity: agentic extraversion predicts positive activation in response to appetitive rewards, whilst affilaitve extraversion predicts warmth-affection in response to affiliative rewards. The aim of this thesis was to test affective reactivity in agentic and affiliative extraversion. Additional issues such as the role of cognitive appraisals in affective reactivity, and whether individual differences in reward sensitivity are also observable in physiological markers of emotion were also examined. Affective-reactivity was tested in response to social behaviours, mental imagery and film clips. It was predicted that agentic extraversion would predict positive activation in response to appetitive situations and that affiliative extraversion would predict warmth-affection and pleasure in response to affiliative situations. There was no support for the predictions regarding agentic extraversion, and affiliative extraversion was only found to predict pleasure and warmth-affection following affiliative mental imagery. The relationships between affiliative extraversion and affect were also found to be mediated by cognitive appraisals, and there was some evidence that affiliative extraversion is associated with zygomaticus activation in response to an affiliative film clip. In sum, support for the affective reactivity hypothesis in agentic and affiliative extraversion was limited. Issues for future researchers to consider include how different experimental methods differentially induce emotion, and how agentic and affiliative extraversion should be conceptualised and measured