Agency and Communion Trends in Consumer Goods Advertising

Abstract

Popular accounts of American values have argued that there has been a recent increase in selfishness or egocentrism. Bakan's (1966) concepts of agency and communion provide a basis for an empirical examination of this claim. It was the purpose of this investigation to examine the content of consumer goods advertising for trends in the relative incidence of agency and communion themes over the last seven decades. A content analysis of5486 ads from the January, May, and September issues of a popular women's magazine for each of the years from 1910 to 1979 gave evidence of distinct changes in the ratio of agency themes to communion themes over this time period. Specifically, this ratio was significantly larger in the decade from 1970 to 1979 than in prior decades. There were also increases and decreases in this ratio in prior decades as well, changes which were found to be consistent with other evidence of changes in related values.