To assess ourselves and other people, we usually use two primary trait dimensions, known in psychology as agency (assertiveness) and communion (good nature). In psychology, agency and communion have such significance that they are often referred to as just the “Big Two”.
Why do agency and communion determine how we think about ourselves and others?
“The fact that the ‘Big Two’ are so incredibly important to us humans when we reflect on ourselves and on other people cannot be a coincidence. There must be an evolutionary advantage for us in paying particular attention to these two dimensions of personality traits,” explains Mannheim psychologist Jochen Gebauer. But what exactly is this advantage? “Whatever it is, we have to assume that the evolutionary advantage must be substantial, otherwise agency and communion would not be so central in human thinking,” Gebauer says.
International and interdisciplinary team to decode the “Big Two”
To explore this question, the European Research Council has awarded Jochen Gebauer one of the highly competitive and prestigious Consolidator Grants. Together with colleagues from the Universities of Copenhagen (Denmark) and Exeter (UK), Gebauer wants to develop and test a new theory on the “Big Two” over the next five years. To this end, the interdisciplinary research team is planning, among other things, specially developed laboratory experiments, extensive long-term surveys, and the consolidation and analysis of huge amounts of data from official statistics and other sources.