The influence of success and failure experiences on agency

Agency is—besides communion—a basic dimension of traits. It can be specifically linked to behavioral outcomes, to status, mastery, self-esteem and to success. The present paper analyzes the situational malleability of agency. Two studies tested whether an individual’s agency (but not communion) is situationally influenced by the experience of success versus failure at a task, as well as whether this effect is the same for men and women. Supporting our hypotheses, the induction of success versus failure experiences led to changes in agency that were independent of actual performance, independent of type of task (memorizing vs. face recognition), independent of induction methodology (easy vs. difficult task vs. manipulated performance feedback), and independent of self-esteem, initial level of agency and of the participants’ gender. Communion was not influenced by this kind of experience. Implications for both the basic dimension of agency and for theories on gender and gender stereotypes are discussed. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Agency and communion are fundamental dimensions of traits and person descriptors. Agency manifests itself in self-protection, self-assertion, and self-expansion and is a superordinate theme encompassing mastery and control; communionmanifests itself in the sense of being at onewith others, in non-contractual cooperation, in relatedness and sharing (Bakan, 1966). The present paper is concerned with the dynamics of peoples’ agentic characteristics. In longitudinal research it was demonstrated that trait agency changes in dependence on vocational success, and that this effect is the same for men and women (Abele, 2003). An experimental replication is still lacking. The present paper presents two studies that experimentally tested the influence of specific success versus failure experiences on the participants’ state agency. We predicted that state agency is reduced after failure experiences and enhanced after success experiences. Compared to a longitudinal study the experimental situation is more standardized and findings in line with our hypotheses would be important because of three reasons: First, they would allow drawing a causal link between success/ European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 436–448 (2008) Published online 2 July 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.454 *Correspondence to: Andrea E. Abele, Social Psychology Group, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Bismarckstr. 6, D 91054 Erlangen, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 7 November 2006 Accepted 30 May 2007 failure experiences and agency; second, they would support the assumption that agency is indeed a mastery-related trait; and third, they would be important with respect to research on gender because agency is stereotypically tied to the male gender stereotype. The present data will showwhether the link between agency and ‘male’ is still warranted. THE FUNDAMENTAL DIMENSIONS OF AGENCY AND COMMUNION Agency and communion are fundamental dimensions underlying judgments of persons, groups, and the self (Abele & Wojcziske, 2007; Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005; Moskowitz, 2005; Paulhus & John, 1998). They are superordinate factors of personality which broadly cover the dominance/ambition (agency) versus nurturance/warmth (communion) dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex (Wiggins, 1991), and they can be related to the tendencies of egoistic versus moralistic biases in self-description (Paulhus & John, 1998). Agency is correlated with self-esteem (Helgeson & Fritz, 1999), with power motivation (Saragovi, Aubé, Koestner, & Zuroff, 2002), with mastery and achievement related goals (Pöhlmann, 2001), with self-efficacy (Hermann & Betz, 2004), and with psychological well-being (Helgeson, 1994). Communion is correlated with secure attachment styles (Bartz & Lydon, 2004), with affiliation and with intimacy related goals (Pöhlmann, 2001). THE DYNAMICS OF AGENCY Although agency is a relatively stable trait, it may also be a dynamic state malleable in response to situational conditions. Hannover (1997), for instance, showed that the agentic self-concept of children was responsive to the tasks they completed. Moskowitz, Suh, and Desaulniers (1994) found that people rated themselves as more agentic in situations where they interacted with a supervisee than in situations where they interacted with a boss. Occupational contexts enhance the agentic state self-concept (Smith, Noll, & Bryant, 1999). In a longitudinal study Abele (2003) found that an individual’s agency predicted his/her occupational success 18 months later. A reciprocal impact was also found whereby occupational success led to increases in agency. There are, hence a number of studies demonstrating that agency is dynamic. There are, however, no studies yet demonstrating that an experimental manipulation of success versus failure at a task has an influence on agency. The demonstration of such a situational malleability of agency would be theoretically important because this would suggest that the long-time dynamic of agency is based on accumulated short-time experiences.