Agency and communion in spontaneous self-descriptions: Occurrence and situational malleability

This study investigated agency and communion in self descriptions using a free-response format as well as an established rating scale. I hypothesized that agency, and communion as fundamental dimensions of social judgment also emerge in spontaneous self-descriptions; that self-descriptions comprise more communal than agentic content; and that self-descriptions vary intraindividually with context (work vs. family). In accord with these predictions, more than two-thirds of participants' (N = 73) self-descriptions could reliably be coded in terms of agency and communion. Participants generally used more communal than agentic attributes to describe themselves, but they did not rate the former as more important. Participants used more agentic characteristics to describe themselves in a work context than in a family context; conversely, they used more communal characteristics to describe themselves in a family, context than in a work context. The correlations between spontaneous self-descriptions and rating-scale answers were low Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.