It has been argued that agency and communion define the fundamental dimensions of human existence. Agency represents strivings for expansion and elevation that surface as efforts to pursue social dominance. Communion represents strivings for contact and congregation that surface as efforts to preserve social bonds. From an evolutionary perspective, agency and communion define the problems of group living to which our ancestors were historically required to adapt. From a dyadic-interactional perspective, agency and communion organize the domain of behavior that individuals in contemporary societies are presently able to demonstrate. The purpose of this research was to explore the agentic and communal dimensions underlying social adaptation and emotional adjustment; this objective was pursued through the use of event-contingent recording procedures that require respondents to report upon their behavior in significant social interactions over extended time intervals. I first propose that emotional adjustment is optimized through mitigation processes that balance the expression of agency and communion in everyday behavior. Findings indicated that a balance within agency and within communion---achieved through moderate levels of agentic and communal expression---predicted optimal emotional adjustment. I then propose that the dark aspects of agency and communion---the human propensities to quarrel and submit---are equally relevant to social adaptation. In this regard, I argue that these propensities represent social rank strategies through which individuals grapple with and defend themselves against feelings of threat and inferiority. Consistent with an evolutionary perspective upon social competition, individuals tended to quarrel when threatened by subordinates and to submit when threatened by superiors. Consistent with an evolutionary perspective upon defeat and depression, individuals who typically felt more inferior tended to quarrel more frequently with subordina
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.38485 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Fournier, Marc Alan |
| Contributors | Moskowitz, D. S. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001956090, proquestno: NQ85707, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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