Communal Orientation Research Articles

Gender and contextual variations in self-perceived cognitive competence.

School performance and cognitive competence can be conceptualized as social and relational constructs. Thus, we expect their association to vary as a function of other socially-embedded variables which have proven meaningful in the academic domain. The present study takes a critical theory approach to assess gender-related and contextual variability in the association between peer-assessed school performance and self-perceived cognitive competence. The sample consisted of 719 preadolescents (M age = 9.5 years, range = 9 to 12.5 years) living in lower- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada and Barranquilla, Columbia. Multigroup comparisons revealed that (a) peer-assessed school competence was more strongly associated with self-perceived cognitive competence for upper-middle-class than lower-middle-class participants from Barranquilla, whereas the opposite pattern was observed with Montreal participants, and (b) that the association between communal orientation and self-perceived cognitive competence was stronger for girls than for boys across the sample, especially in the upper-middle-class school in Montreal. These findings highlight the nuanced degree of gender differences in preadolescents' perceived academic competence and emphasize the role of SES in shaping self-perceptions.

Correction to: Resilience in Interracial–Interethnic Relationships in the United States: Assessing Relationship Maintenance and Communal Orientation as Protection Against Network Stigma

Correction to: Resilience in Interracial–Interethnic Relationships in the United States: Assessing Relationship Maintenance and Communal Orientation as Protection Against Network Stigma

State relationship orientation and helping behaviors: the influence of hunger and trait relationship orientations.

Exchange orientation (EO) and communal orientation (CO) are two fundamental relationship orientations (ROs). We argue that state RO (i.e., the relative activation of the two ROs at a specific moment) varies across situations and should be differentiated from trait ROs. In two studies, we examined how state RO affected subsequent helping behaviors and how it was influenced by a situational factor (i.e., hunger). We also examined whether trait ROs moderated the above links. An eye-tracking paradigm (Study 1) and a scenario-based paradigm (Study 2) were adopted to assess state RO. The two studies consistently found that relatively more activation of state EO over state CO reduced helping tendency toward strangers (Study 1) and acquaintances (Study 2). High trait CO amplified the effect in Study 1. Moreover, hunger heightened the relative activation of state EO over state CO in both studies, but the effect was only significant for participants with high trait EO in Study 1. The results highlight the importance to study the momentary variation of ROs and open new research directions.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03666-y.

The role of partner support for health behaviours in people living with and beyond cancer: A qualitative study.

This study aimed to qualitatively explore how partner support for health behaviours is perceived, received, and utilised in people living with and beyond cancer (LWBC). Semi-structured audio interviews were conducted with 24 participants, 15 men and nine women, living with and beyond breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer. Inductive and deductive Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the data. Three key themes with six subthemes were identified relating to partner support for health behaviours: (1) Interdependence (Reciprocity, Overt Control, Influence & Motivation) (2) Concordance (Shared Attitudes & Health Beliefs, Shared Health Behaviour) and (3) Communal Coping (Communal Orientation towards Health and Decision Making, Co-operative Action in Health Behaviour). Partner support plays a unique and significant role in the health behaviours of people LWBC. Partners play a collaborative role in managing health and facilitating health behaviours, while the high level of concordance in couples may represent a potential barrier to change via the reinforcement of maladaptive health beliefs and behaviours. Overall, findings demonstrate that partners should be considered and included where possible when designing future behaviour change interventions for people LWBC.

Cechy osobowości, orientacja sprawcza i wspólnotowa a wypalenie w nauce zdalnej studentów różnych lat

The coronavirus pandemic forced an immediate transition of education to remote. This affected the students significantly. The aim of this study is to examine the level of academic burnout in remote learning during the pandemic, taking into account personality differences (Big Five traits: conscientiousness, neuroticism; communal orientation) as predictors. The difference in the burnout level within two groups was also examined – people learning remotely from the beginning and those who previously studied stationary. A personal survey and three questionnaires were used: the Polish adaptation of the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI-PL) by Sorokowska, Słowińska, Zbieg and Sorokowski measuring Big Five traits, the Scale Measuring Agency and Communion by Wojciszke and Szlendak, and the Polish adaptation of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) by Chirkowska-Smolak measuring burnout. 587 students aged 18–48 participated in the study. A general hypothesis was that the mentioned individual differences stand as burnout level predictors. The results confirmed that a high level of neuroticism and communal orientation predict higher exhaustion – one of the burnout factors. Higher conscientiousness predicts lower burnout levels in both factors (exhaustion and disengagement). Results also showed that people who previously studied stationary had higher burnout levels than those studying remotely from the beginning – the difference is slight.

Deviant Men at Work: A Social-Motivational Theory for Change

This paper proposes a motivational theory of deviance from gender norms that recognizes, understands and purposely develops working men´s communal behavior. Combining key streams of analysis that integrate organizational and psychological research, I provide an overarching approach about specific routes to facilitate change from men with testable propositions that inform future research. I explore the critical role of accommodating social and organizational patterns that reinforce men´s communal orientations. These contexts enable a psychological process of discrepancy reduction that allow identity-restructuring processes and facilitate gender deviance by changing meaning and importance of the masculine identity. These contexts also serve as motivational mechanisms that increase perceptions that gender-deviant efforts: (a) are feasible, (b) lead to a fair balance of positive and negative rewards and (c) are personally desirable. Evidence from research corroborates that explicit representations of deviant men and the value of communion at work are necessary steps to assist these psychological processes and allow men engage in fruitful forms of gender deviant behavior. This transformation is critical for both gender equality and organizational functioning.

Linking EthicalLleadership to Extra-Role Behaviours: Insights from Temporal Organizations

The study aims to explore the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ project citizenship behaviour (PCB) through the mediating role of communal orientation and moderating role of harmonious work passion. To test the hypothesized nexuses, time-lagged data were collected from 353 employees working in various project-based organizations. AMOS and Hayes' PROCESS macro were employed to analyze the proposed associations. Study findings provide empirical evidence for the direct and indirect association between ethical leadership and PCB via communal orientations. Results also indicate that employees' harmonious work passion further pronounces the relationship between ethical leadership and PCB. Despite the theoretical relevance of ethical leadership for improving employees’ PCB, there is a surprising paucity of evidence about the ethical leadership-PCB link. Specifically, no study has examined the direct and indirect association between ethical leadership and project citizenship behavior. We contributed to filling this gap and bringing the contextual and dispositional antecedents of PCB to the fore.

Integrating relational turbulence theory and the theory of resilience and relational load to investigate the relationships of couples with chronic illness

ABSTRACT Chronic illness is both prevalent in U.S. adults and influential in people’s lives and relationships. In this study, we integrate relational turbulence theory with the theory of resilience and relational load to consider associations between perceptions of the relationship, relational maintenance, and two global relationship qualities: resilience and relational load. Results from a cross-sectional online survey of 100 dyads in which at least one partner reported a chronic condition suggest relational turbulence was associated with relational maintenance, which, in turn, was associated with relational load and resilience. Relational maintenance emerged as a mediator in the association between relational turbulence and resilience and relational load in several tests. Communal orientation was positively associated with relational maintenance and indirectly related to resilience and relational load in certain circumstances. We discuss these findings for each theory individually, the value of considering these theories concurrently, and pragmatic advice for couples navigating chronic illness.

Optimizing Handwritten Font Style to Connect With Customers

Considerable research has demonstrated the positive effects of handwritten font styles on product attachment and word-of-mouth behavior. However, few studies examined whether these positive effects can be mitigated or even reversed. The purpose of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by identifying several boundary conditions (communal orientation, message type, and hotel type) for the positive effects of handwritten font styles. We conducted two quasi-experimental studies. In Study 1 ( n = 125), the positive effect of handwritten font styles on attitude toward a hotel was not observed among individuals with a low communal orientation. In Study 2 ( n = 245), the handwritten (vs. machine-written) font styles in the sustainability messages of a luxury hotel reduce warmth of the hotel. Hospitality managers should use handwritten font styles carefully depending on hotel type, message type, and customer characteristics.

The role of the Big Two in socially responsible behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Agency and communion in adolescents' personal norm and behavioral adherence to instituted measures.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus urged all members of the society to adopt COVID-responsible behavioral patterns and practice them in everyday life. Given the variability in its adoption, it is critical to understand psychological factors associated with socially responsible behavior during the pandemic. This might be even more important among adolescents, who are less endangered by the virus but contribute to its spread. In this article, we focus on adolescent boys' and girls' agency and communion orientations to explain the level of importance they attribute to the instituted measures to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus (personal norm), as well as their behavioral adherence to those measures. In total, 12,552 adolescents (67.6% girls, Mage = 15.06, SDage = 2.44, age range 10-21) answered inventory assessing adolescents' agentic and communal orientation (GRI-JUG) and items related to personal norm regarding the instituted measures and behavioral adherence to the measures. The results showed a small positive role of communion in both boys' and girls' personal norm and behavioral adherence, whereas agency played a very small negative role in boys' and girls' personal norm and boys' behavioral adherence to measures. Nevertheless, these findings could indicate the importance of enhancing communal traits and behaviors in both genders in order to assure socially responsible behavior during the pandemic.

Building bonds: A pre-registered secondary data analysis examining linear and curvilinear relations between socio-economic status and communal attitudes

A large body of research points to differences in the communal orientation of people from a lower and higher socio-economic status (SES) background. However, direct evidence for differences in communal attitudes remains scant. In this pre-registered report, we test the hypothesis that SES impacts the incentive value of cues associated with bonding and social relations, thereby fostering differences in implicit and explicit communal attitudes. We further speculate that for people at the low end of the SES spectrum, the prevalence of discrimination, exclusion, and conflict means that relationships may have less of an incentive value. Thus, we hypothesise that the association between SES and communal attitudes follows a curvilinear trajectory and peaks at medium levels of SES. Testing these predictions in a dataset derived from the Attitudes, Identities, and Individual Differences (AIID) Study (Hussey, Hughes, & Nosek, 2018), we found no evidence supporting a linear or a curvilinear association between SES and communal attitudes. Instead, implicit and explicit communal attitudes did not vary across the SES spectrum. We discuss the implications of these findings and avenues for future research.

Sociopolitical Influences in Early Emerging Adult College Students’ Pandemic-Related Civic Engagement

The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on college-going emerging adults and their communities, which may prompt them to engage civically. Using spring 2020 survey data from a national sample of college students aged 18–22 ( N = 707), we document the prevalence of pandemic-related civic engagement as well as differences in engagement by sociopolitical perspectives. The majority of participants (70.4%) reported engaging civically at least once, most commonly online (e.g., sharing information about COVID-19 on social media, volunteering virtually). Results showed differences in civic engagement by communal orientation and the candidate participants intended to vote for in the 2020 presidential election, but not by political party affiliation. Qualitative data provide insight into different motivations for pandemic-related civic engagement. We conclude that emerging adult college students’ pandemic-related civic engagement is partially motivated by their sociopolitical perspectives and discuss implications for future work examining emerging adult civic engagement more broadly.

How belief in a just world leads to prosocial behaviours: The role of communal orientation

Belief in a just world (BJW) is widely held by people who tend to believe that the world is fair and that individuals get what they deserve and deserve what they get. This study investigated the mediating role of communal orientation in the relationship between prosocial behaviour and personal BJW (PBJW) as well as general BJW (GBJW). In Study 1, an online questionnaire was used to measure participants' explicit BJW, prosocial behaviour and communal orientation. The results showed a mediating effect of communal orientation on the relationship between explicit BJW and prosocial behaviour. Considering that BJW is often conceptualised as an implicit construct, in Study 2, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was used to measure implicit PBJW and GBJW to examine their relationship with actual donation behaviour. The results showed that implicit PBJW and GBJW are indirectly but positively related to prosocial behaviour via communal orientation; thus, to some extent, PBJW and GBJW should have positive social significance.

You get what you give: Pet relationships in a communal orientation framework

Previous research has demonstrated the association between human communal relationships and well-being. We extend the previous research and view whether relationship orientation to pet relationships affords similar benefits. We examined this with question with two correlational studies. Study 1 viewed the correlations between pet relationship orientation and well-being measures, both before and after controlling for other features of one's relationship with their pet to determine the unique contribution of relationship orientation. In addition, Study 2 demonstrated that communal pet relationships were similar to communal relationships with a participant's romantic partner and platonic friend, although their contributions to well-being were out shadowed by those of interpersonal relationships. The current findings advance relationship orientation by providing evidence that relationship orientation can be applied to non-human relationships.

Social Goal Orientation Differentially Influences Exposure to Interpersonal and Noninterpersonal Trauma.

Emerging adults are at an increased risk for trauma exposure, both interpersonal and non-interpersonal, which often occurs within a social context. How an individual interacts with this context may heighten or buffer against their risk for trauma. Social goal orientation represents individual differences that characterize how an individual navigates their social environment. These orientations fall along the two interacting dimensions, Agency and Communion. In a community sample (N=274; 55% female, average age = 18.9) of young adults, we sought to examine the role that these two types of social goals, both uniquely and in interaction with one another, may play in interpersonal and non-interpersonal trauma risk. Because men and women are at differential risk for trauma, we also examined the impact of gender on these associations. Findings revealed that social goal orientations are linked to trauma exposure in ways that differ depending on the type of trauma, interpersonal or non-interpersonal. Moreover, these processes differed for men and women. Whereas a high Communal Orientation was associated with decreased exposure to all trauma, for both women and men, Agentic Orientation was associated with an increased number of interpersonal and non-interpersonal trauma. For men, agency and communion interacted, suggesting that the extent to which an agentic orientation may be risky or protective for interpersonal trauma depends strongly on communal orientation. These findings provided initial evidence for the role social goal orientation may play as a risk or protective factor for trauma exposure.

Resilience in Interracial–Interethnic Relationships in the United States: Assessing Relationship Maintenance and Communal Orientation as Protection Against Network Stigma

Abstract Using the theory of resilience and relational load as a framework, this study examined whether a stress reduction or a stress-buffering model best explained risk and resilience in interracial–interethnic relationships in the United States when managing stigma from one’s social network. Eight hundred and sixteen Black and Latinx individuals in heterosexual relationships with a white, non-Latinx partner completed the survey. The stress reduction model was a better representation of individuals’ experiences in Latinx–white relationships and the stress-buffering model was a better representation of individuals’ experiences in Black–white relationships. For Latinx individuals, greater relationship maintenance received from one’s white partner and stronger levels of communal orientation were associated with reductions in stigma-related stress and conflict, which in turn, were associated with better relationship satisfaction and less relational load. For Black individuals, relationship maintenance and communal orientation moderated the associations between stress/conflict and the relational outcomes, but in unexpected ways.

Does the Stereotypicality of Mothers' Occupation Influence Children's Communal Occupational Aspirations and Communal Orientation?

Career development is a lifelong process that starts in infancy and is shaped by a number of different factors during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Even though career development is shaped through life, relatively little is known about the predictors of occupational aspirations in childhood. Therefore, in the present work we investigate how the stereotypicality of a mother’s occupation (female-dominated/communal vs. non-female-dominated/agentic) influences her young child’s communal occupational aspirations and communal orientation. We conducted two studies with young children. Study 1 included 72 mother–child dyads recruited from childcare centers in Northern Norway (children’s age range: 4½–6 years). Study 2 included 106 mother–child dyads recruited from Norwegian elementary schools (children’s age range: 6 to 13 years). Results from Study 1 showed that the stereotypicality of mothers’ occupation was related to their children’s communal occupational aspirations and children’s communal orientation. In contrast to our predictions and results from Study 1, the stereotypicality of mothers’ occupation was not significantly related to children’s communal occupational aspirations nor their communal orientation in Study 2. In both studies, we found no relationship between mothers’ gender attitudes or share of child care and children’s communal occupational aspirations. The results are discussed in terms of parents’ influence on children’s development of occupational aspirations.

Meaning Well Is Not the Same as Doing Good: The Fraught Circumstances of Allyship With Indigenous Groups

Meaning Well Is Not the Same as Doing Good: The Fraught Circumstances of Allyship With Indigenous Groups

The Effects of Type of Pronouns and Hope Appeals in Supportive Messages About COVID-19

This study examined the role of pronouns in supportive messages and hope appeals in facilitating people's coping with coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). Participants included 256 residents of New York State, and they evaluated hypothetical messages about COVID-19. Results showed that when people have a communal orientation to coping, you-language (vs. we-language) supportive messages led to more emotional improvement. The presence (vs. absence) of hope appeals in supportive messages increased communal coping. We discuss the implications of results in promoting emotion- and action-focused coping.

Compassionate goals predict COVID-19 health behaviors during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

We predicted that people with compassionate goals to support others and not harm them practiced more COVID-19 health behaviors during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to protect both themselves and others from infection. Three studies (N = 1,143 American adults) supported these predictions and ruled out several alternative explanations. Compassionate goals unrelated to the health context predicted COVID-19 health behaviors better than the general motivation to be healthy (Studies 2 and 3). In contrast, general health motivation predicted general health behaviors better than did compassionate goals. Compassionate goals and political ideology each explained unique variance in COVID-19 health behaviors (Studies 1–3). Compassionate goals predict unique variance in COVID-19 health behaviors beyond empathic concern, communal orientation, and relational self-construal (Study 3), supporting the unique contribution of compassionate goals to understanding health behaviors. Our results suggest that ecosystem motivation is an important predictor of health behaviors, particularly in the context of a highly contagious disease.