Personal and Social Means Can Be (But Need Not Be) Opposing: The Case of Social Class

Abstract

Since humans have inhabited social groups, people have grappled with when to rely on others or get by on their own. In many ways, navigating this trade-off reflects one of the central conundrums of living: When should we be agentic versus turn to others for support, and what are the psychological and interpersonal ramifications of these decisions? The target article of Milyavsky et al. (this issue) offers a powerful answer to these questions. Their theory is grounded in the notion that self-reliance and social support represent alternative means of goal pursuit. The stronger the individual’s sense of personal agency, Milyavsky et al. (this issue) reason, the less likely they are to seek social assistance and the more likely they are to devalue social relationships. By contrast, the more individuals rely on social support, the weaker their motivation to be agentic, the lesser their tendency to focus on and prioritize the self, and the more attentive they become to others. There is much to like about what Milyavsky et al. (this issue) lay out. Their theory is compelling, first and foremost, in its parsimony; treating selfand other-reliance as hydraulic, dueling motivations is appealing and straightforward. Second, their theory is impressive in its explanatory range: Milyavsky et al. (this issue) marshal a varied assortment of empirical evidence across a sweeping array of domains to substantiate their claims. Third, we learn their theory is distinct from and provides value above other related theorizing, most notably on the contrast between agency and communion. Finally, their theory is empirically generative by outlining a range of open and interesting questions that should set the stage for a robust scientific inquiry into compensatory modes of goal pursuit for years to come. The notion that personal means and social means of goal pursuit represent dueling ends of a motivational continuum finds parallels in other psychological literatures. In research on social attribution, for example, dispositional or individual explanations for social behavior are frequently treated as––and empirically found to be––hydraulically related to situational or environmental explanations. As dispositional explanations (e.g., laziness) for a particular individual outcome (e.g., poverty) increase, situational explanations (e.g., structural unfairness) for that same outcome tend to decrease, and vice versa (Hunt & Bullock, 2016; Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2009; Piff et al., 2020). Similarly, the basic dynamic that selfand other-reliance are inversely related can be observed across myriad social contexts, including in research on the psychological ramifications of social class (e.g., Dietze & Knowles, 2016, 2021; Piff, 2014; Piff, Kraus, Côt e, Cheng, & Keltner, 2010, Piff, Kraus, & Keltner, 2018). At the same time––and as is the case with select findings in attribution research showing that dispositional and individual explanations are not always inversely related but can even sometimes be positively related to one another (e.g., see Piff et al., 2020)––the psychological study of social class points toward contexts in which social means of goal pursuit may not necessarily compete with personal ones. Indeed, there may be situations in which these two motivations operate in tandem to mutually reinforce one another. In this commentary, we will detail how differentials in personal agency, stemming from the inequalities in resource ecologies associated with different social class groups, give rise to class differences in self-focus versus attentiveness to others. We review how these class differences play out across an array of social outcomes, including evaluations of the self (e.g., Piff, 2014; Twenge & Campbell, 2002), attentiveness to others (e.g., Dietze & Knowles, 2016), emotional responding (e.g., Dietze & Knowles, 2021; Piff & Moskowitz, 2018; Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012), and prosociality (Piff et al., 2010; Piff & Robinson, 2017). These empirical findings provide a compelling demonstration of the overarching framework of the target article: Social modes of goal pursuit can arise as a compensatory response to reduced personal agency. However, select findings in the social class literature also point toward instances in which social support may actually facilitate a sense of personal agency rather than undermine it. We discuss two such cases in our review to point toward some potential boundary conditions to the theory of Milyavsky and colleagues. We conclude by cautioning against both a unilateral conceptualization of selfand other-focus as dueling motivations and a social taxonomy that renders people who typically need people (or who think they do not) as necessarily being so.