We present a Double Perspective Model (DPM) explaining why agency (competence) and communion (warmth) constitute two basic content dimensions of social cognition. Every social action involves two perspectives: of the agent (a person who performs an action) and of the recipient (a person at whom the action is directed). Immediate cognitive goals of the agent and recipient differ, which results in heightened accessibility and weight of content referring either to agency (from the agent's perspective) or to communion (from the recipient's perspective). DPM explains why evaluations of other persons are dominated by communal over agentic considerations and allows a novel hypothesis that self-esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. We present several studies supporting this hypothesis. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In this paper we build on the distinction of agency (competence) and communion (warmth) as the fundamental dimensions of social cognition. We present a Double Perspective Model (DPM) offering a new account of why agency and communion constitute the two basic dimensions. We also present a novel hypothesis resulting from the modelthat self-esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. We begin by shortly reviewing the idea of agency and communion as basic dimensions of social cognition, then present DPM as an explanation of this duality and discuss two main derivations of our model. First, perceptions and evaluations of other persons are dominated by communal over agentic information. As this is a well-established fact now, we only summarize the confirming empirical evidence. Second, the self-cognition (including self-esteem) is dominated by agentic over communal information. As this is a novel prediction, we discuss it in some detail and present a series of supporting studies. THE DOUBLE PERSPECTIVE MODELThere is an agreement that social cognition involves two basic dimensions of content on the level of both individuals and social groups. This distinction has always been present in social psychology, though under different names, such as masculine-feminine, agentic-communal, task-relation oriented, individualistic-collectivistic, intellectually-socially, good-bad, competence-morality, or competence-warmth (Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005). Though these distinctions are not identical, they show a considerable overlap when studied empirically on the level of abstract traitnames frequently used to capture their meaning (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007). All the former terms denote intellectual and motivational competence and focus on efficiency of goalattainment. All the latter terms denote prosocial or antisocial content of the goals and concern about social relations. After Bakan (1966), who first theorized on the duality of human existence -on individuals as having separate goals and being parts of social units-we use ''agency'' versus ''communion'' as generic terms capturing the essence of those various distinctions.Agentic and communal contents constitut...

Social thermoregulation theory posits that modern human relationships are pleisiomorphically organized around body temperature regulation. In two studies (N = 1755) designed to test the principles from this theory, we used supervised machine learning to identify social and non-social factors that relate to core body temperature. This data-driven analysis found that complex social integration (CSI), defined as the number of high-contact roles one engages in, is a critical predictor of core body temperature. We further used a cross-validation approach to show that colder climates relate to higher levels of CSI, which in turn relates to higher CBT (when climates get colder). These results suggest that despite modern affordances for regulating body temperature, people still rely on social warmth to buffer their bodies against the cold.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.

Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with a category associated with intelligence ("professor") subsequently performed 13% better on a trivia test than participants primed with a category associated with a lack of intelligence ("soccer hooligans"). In two unpublished replications of this study designed to verify the appropriate testing procedures, Dijksterhuis, van Knippenberg, and Holland observed a smaller difference between conditions (2%-3%) as well as a gender difference: Men showed the effect (9.3% and 7.6%), but women did not (0.3% and -0.3%). The procedure used in those replications served as the basis for this multilab Registered Replication Report. A total of 40 laboratories collected data for this project, and 23 of these laboratories met all inclusion criteria. Here we report the meta-analytic results for those 23 direct replications (total N = 4,493), which tested whether performance on a 30-item general-knowledge trivia task differed between these two priming conditions (results of supplementary analyses of the data from all 40 labs, N = 6,454, are also reported). We observed no overall difference in trivia performance between participants primed with the "professor" category and those primed with the "hooligan" category (0.14%) and no moderation by gender.