{"title":"People Who Need People","authors":"A. Duckworth","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037995","url":null,"abstract":"For years, my husband Jason and I would pack the kids into the car and set off for a monthly visit to my father-in-law’s house. The 45-minute route was the same every time. From experience, I knew when we exited the highway that we had 20minutes to go. When we passed the cow pasture, we were almost there. But to this day, I cannot tell you how to get there, and without GPS I would not be able to navigate there by myself. Why not? Because my Jason always did the driving. Milyavsky et al. (this issue) argue that when a goal can be accomplished by either personal or social means, more of one results in less of the other when “no alternative goals attainable by only one of the two contrasting means are active” (p. X). In other words, the more you accomplish the goal yourself, the less you rely on others to accomplish it, and vice versa. See Figure 1. For instance, the more Jason navigated to his dad’s house, the less I took responsibility for that task. In a goal hierarchy framework, my driving and Jason’s driving would be called equifinal—substitutable means to the same end. And in the simple scenario Milyavsky et al. (this issue) consider, there are no other goals competing for attention—no alternative goals, for instance, toward which Jason or I might devote effort. The logic of Milyavsky et al.’s (this issue) so-called “hydraulic relations” model (p. 1) is watertight. The inverse relations they describe should emerge in the closed, simple system I prefer calling the ceteris paribus scenario. When all other conditions remain constant, if Jason always drives me to my father-in-law’s, why would I ever offer to do it or learn how? And if instead I preferred taking the wheel, why would I ever ask for his assistance? And yet the ceteris paribus scenario is, I think, the exception rather than the rule. More often, we are animated by a much more complex system of dynamic, interactive goals and means. I call this more complicated and common scenario mutatis mutandis, meaning “things being changed that have to be changed.” As shown in Figure 2, in life there are four complications that contribute to a positive relationship between personal agency and social assistance: (a) personal agency can increase our desire to ask for assistance from others; (b) social support can increase personal agency; (c) sometimes what is required to reach a goal is the synergistic combination of both personal action and the assistance of other people; and (d) when other people help you solve a problem, your personal agency can be applied to an alternative goal that, like the original goal, advances a superordinate goal.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42463652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can We Get Social Assistance Without Losing Agency? Engaging in Market Relationships as an Alternative to Searching for Help from Others","authors":"Agata Gąsiorowska, T. Zaleskiewicz","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037998","url":null,"abstract":"Commentary to Milyavsky, M., Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M., Chernikova, M., Ellenberg, M., & Pierro, A. (2022). People Who Need People (and Some Who Think They Don’t): On Compensatory Personal and Social Means of Goal Pursuit. Psychological Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/huyb4","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48028752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agency and Assistance Are Compensatory When They Are Perceived as Substitutable Means: A Response to Commentaries","authors":"Maxim Milyavsky, Marina Chernikova","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2038009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2038009","url":null,"abstract":"We are grateful to the commentators for their insightful commentaries. Most of the commentators praised our theory highly and agreed with its basic tenets. They also drew our attention to additional data that supports our theory. Yet, some commentators pointed to data that seems to be at odds with our theory. In what follows, we will set out more clearly the main propositions of the Agency Assistance Model, discuss the new supporting data that we’ve become aware of, and try to clarify the apparent contradictions between our theory and some evidence indicated by the commentators. The starting point of our theory is the idea that human cognition is goal-driven, and that the same goal can be pursued by different means. We tried to explain the relationship between the individual and society from this point of view. To achieve goals, individuals can rely either on their own means or on the means of others. The principle of substitutability of means from Goal Systems Theory describes the relationship between equifinal means as compensatory (Kruglanski et al., 2002; Kruglanski, Chernikova, Babush, Dugas, & Schumpe, 2015). Based on this principle, we derive two hypotheses regarding the relationship between individual and social means. Hypothesis 1 (H1) states that the higher the effectiveness of personal means to achieve the goal(s) (i.e., personal agency), the more an individual can rely on himself to achieve the goal(s), and the higher will be his valuation of the self; as a result, the less s/he needs to rely on others to achieve the goal(s), which accordingly reduces their value in his/her eyes. Analogously, Hypothesis 2 (H2) states that the higher the perceived effectiveness of social means for achieving the goal(s) (i.e., social assistance), the more an individual can rely on social means and the higher will become their worth in his/her eyes; as a result, the less s/he needs to rely on his/her personal means and the lower will be their valuation of the self.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41753110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agency and Assistance in Transactive Goal Systems","authors":"Gráinne M. Fitzsimons","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037997","url":null,"abstract":"In their article, “People Who Need People (and Some Who Think They Don’t): On Compensatory Personal and Social Means of Goal Pursuit,” Milyavsky et al. (this issue) put forward an elegant model of the interconnection of personal and social means in the process of attaining important goals. The postulates and hypotheses are consistent with several strains of theory and research across a diverse set of literatures, and the integration is creative and generative. In my commentary, I discuss how the Agency-Assistance Model (AAM) would predict behavior within a close relationship or transactive goal system. I thus attempt to consider the intersection of AAM with my own research and thinking on these issues as I have characterized them (with my colleagues Eli Finkel and Michelle van Dellen) in our work on Transactive Goal Dynamics (TGD) theory.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49096240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Case for Social Support as Social Assistance: When Social Means to Personal Goal Pursuit Enhance Agency","authors":"G. McMillan, M. Milyavskaya","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2038001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2038001","url":null,"abstract":"the Milyavsky et al. (this describe a theoretical model on the compensatory nature between personal agency and social assistance as means to attain goals. They review evidence for the assertions that (1) higher personal agency reduces the motivation to use social assistance during goal pursuit, and (2) increased reliance on social assistance decreases motivation for, and sense of, personal agency. They assert that they have applied a general analysis to a broad range of sources of agency and assistance that enable individual goal pursuit, whether those goals are con-crete or abstract. The agency-assistance model is an ambitious attempt to reconcile several disparate social psychology literatures and form a cohesive explanation for the apparent compensatory nature of personal and social means to goal pursuit. Milyavsky et al. that their model achieves par-simony and they have certainly attempted to explain a large amount of data with few assumptions. However, in doing so, they have failed to account for several theoretical per-spectives with well-established explanatory power.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43554318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"It’s All About Significance: A Reframing in Response to Commentaries","authors":"A. Kruglanski, Molly Ellenberg, Antonio Pierro","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2038008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2038008","url":null,"abstract":"We appreciated our commentators ’ insights and the time they took in reflecting on our target article “ People who need people. ” Their remarks and analyses prompted us to re-think the issues at hand and re-consider the best way to understand the ample data that our model attempted to integrate. The “ heat ” of this discussion has engendered some welcome “ light, ” yielding an insight we are excited about. It produced a theoretical reframing in which our prior distinction between agency versus assistance is replaced by another central concept, the striving for personal significance (see Kruglanski et al., in press). In the present response to commentaries, we explain the rationale for this reframing and its fit to relevant empirical findings. Central to our discussion is people ’ s perception of their social worth, the conditions for its rise and fall, and its downstream consequences for people ’ s attitudes toward others.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47306520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agency, Social Assistance (Communion), And Goal Pursuit","authors":"A. Abele","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2037992","url":null,"abstract":"Milyavsky, Kruglanski, Gelfand, Chernikova, and Ellenberg (this issue) propose a theoretical model on the compensatory relations between personal agency and social assistance. The paper is intriguing and thought provoking as it covers a large body of theorizing and empirical findings in psychology. It is an example for the often demanded-for attempt to integrate divergent theories and findings into a more general and overarching model. As an agency – communion researcher (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007, 2014, 2018; Abele, Ellemers, Fiske, Koch, & Yzerbyt, 2021) I will here concentrate on three of the many topics that are worth discussing: (1) constructs; (2) association of constructs; and (3) the association of agency and attitudes toward others.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41736964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological InquiryPub Date : 2022-01-01Epub Date: 2023-02-07DOI: 10.1080/1047840x.2022.2149196
Adam Morris, Todd Braver
{"title":"What is the nature of \"internal content\" prior to attentional selection?","authors":"Adam Morris, Todd Braver","doi":"10.1080/1047840x.2022.2149196","DOIUrl":"10.1080/1047840x.2022.2149196","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10653100/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42098621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Autobiographical Narratives Reflect, Repair, and Rewrite Self-Views","authors":"Kristi A. Costabile, Abby S. Boytos","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2021.2007702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2007702","url":null,"abstract":"Sedikides’s immunity model of psychological homeostasis (this issue) presents a theoretical framework to understand a variety of self-protective social and cognitive psychological tendencies and biases, and in so doing encompasses a broad range of social-cognitive phenomena such as selfhandicapping (Jones & Berglas, 1978), social comparison (Festinger, 1954), and the fading affect bias (Ritchie et al., 2006). Here, we offer an examination and extension of the theoretical principles outlined by Sedikides as well as a discussion of future directions that follow from the ideas proposed in the target article. We focus our commentary on autobiographical narratives and how these narratives function to reflect, repair, and rewrite the self-concept. We will examine the dynamic relationship between autobiographical narratives and current self-views as well as the important role of social and cultural influences on narrative construction, perspectives that received less attention in the target article but which merit careful consideration when developing a greater understanding of the self-construction process.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42511013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Construction, Self-Protection, and Self-Enhancement: A Homeostatic Model of Identity Protection","authors":"C. Sedikides","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004812","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Self-protection and self-enhancement, once depicted as biases that impede accurate self-knowledge and hinder effective environmental control, have more recently been viewed as misbeliefs that can have fortuitous, adaptive consequences. I take the next step forward by construing identity protection and enhancement mechanisms as part of a routine, adaptive system. Whereas biological homeostasis regulates physiological processes, psychological homeostasis regulates the emotional states that threaten a desired identity. Ι elaborate on the nature of psychological homeostasis, the identity system that it modulates, and the immune system that safeguards it from harm. Ι discuss the construction of self-views and narratives in the ordinary stream of mental activity, as well as reparative responses to contemporaneous threats, similar to the immune system’s response to microbes that breach the body’s initial defenses. Using basic immunological principles, Ι distinguish between innate and adaptive psychological immunity, compare the spread of disease to that of threatening information among related self-views and narratives, and consider the “memories” of the biological and psychological immune systems to redress future threats. In addition, Ι offer a set of propositions that include predictions about various aspects of immunity, and end by considering the roles of awareness and self-deception in the immunity process.","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41834232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}