Agency and communion in the roles and personalities of black and white women at midlife.

This study investigated the importance of agency and communion in the life roles and personalities of 175 Black and White women at midlife. Bakan (1966) introduced the terms agency and communion to describe two fundamental modalities of human existence: a modality in which the individual focuses on the self (agency), and a modality in which the individual focuses on being with others (communion). It was hypothesized that the balanced, or simultaneous, presence of agency and communion across midlife women's life roles (partner, worker and mother), and within their personalities, would be associated with high levels of physical and psychological well-being. It was also hypothesized that high levels of agency in the worker role and high levels of communion in the partner role would be associated with high levels of job and relationship satisfaction, respectively. In addition, this study analyzed the relationship between unmitigated agency (agency without communion) in women's personalities and physical health, and unmitigated communion (communion without agency) in women's personalities and psychological health. All of the participants were alumnae of the University of Michigan; the 107 White women were members of the graduating class of 1967, and the 68 Black women were members of the graduating classes of 1967-73. All of the analyses for this study were calculated separately by race so that any potential differences by race could be observed. The results showed that the balanced presence of agency and communion across life roles was related to high levels of psychological and physical well-being for Black women, but not for White women. There was also support for the hypothesis that agency and communion have domain-specific relevance for Black and White women's role satisfaction. Agency and communion in Black women's personalities were independently related to high levels of well-being; however, that was not the case for White women. The unmitigated counterparts of agency and communion were not particularly important for Black or White women's psychological and physical health. The relative lack of significant findings for White women is discussed, as are implications of the findings for Black and White women at midlife.PhDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104906/1/9624562.pdfDescription of 9624562.pdf : Restricted to UM users only