The role of agency and communion in humanness conceptualization- a multi-measure and method approach

Abstract

Among the main factors considered as predictors of humanness attribution were agency and communion. Agency constitutes an ability to affect one's own situation and communion an ability to form meaningful relationships with others. Seen as a cross-culturally universal framework for how people construe the world, these dimensions have been theorized to be pivotal for seeing others as humans and accordingly as less than humans. However, research testing the predictive power of agency and communion (or more fine-grained distinction of sociability and morality) for humanness ratings is showing a complex picture. Part of this complexity can be attributed to non-independence of measures used in previous research, as some traits pertaining to agency and communion were also used in measuring humanness perception, thus posing a risk of multicollinearity. Furthermore, the strength of the relationship of agency and communion with humanness conceptualizations was never tested, thus not allowing to compare which (if any) predictor is stronger. To address these limitations, we asked participants to rate our focal variables both at trait and group levels (4 studies; N_tot = 2565) in which we test the association of agency, communion (as well as morality and sociability), and different humanness measures. Across all studies, we also tested the strength of the relationship of agency and communion with humanness conceptualizations finding a stable and equal in strength relationship of agency and communion with humanness attribution.