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1 This article was downloaded by: [University of Notre Dame] On: 12 February 2015, At: 14:40 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: Registered office: Mortimer House, Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: Agency and Communion in the Structure of Parental Representations Stephanie A. Heck & Aaron L. Pincus Published online: 10 Jun To cite this article: Stephanie A. Heck & Aaron L. Pincus (2001) Agency and Communion in the Structure of Parental Representations, Journal of Personality Assessment, 76:1, , DOI: /S JPA7601_11 To link to this article: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is

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3 JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT, 76(1), Copyright 2001, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. BRIEF REPORT Agency and Communion in the Structure of Parental Representations Stephanie A. Heck and Aaron L. Pincus Department of Psychology Pennsylvania State University We administered the revised Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Representations (Blatt, Chevron, Quinlan, Schaffer, & Wein, 1992) to 279 male and female undergraduate students and carried out independent principal components analyses of maternal and paternal ratings. Three stable factors, Agency, Communion, and Structure, were found in both sets of ratings. This factor structure differed from that reported by Quinlan, Blatt, Chevron, and Wein (1992). Results found here are consistent with contemporary interpersonal personality theory. Object relations theorists posit that internal object representations develop over time through a process by which relationships with significant others are internalized into mental structures (Blatt, Auerbach, & Levy, 1997). Because these structures develop out of interpersonal interactions (e.g., with parents), they can be thought of as interpersonal in nature (Pincus, 1997). One widely used method to assess parental representations, and object representations more generally, is the Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Representations (AOR), developed by Blatt, Wein, Chevron, and Quinlan (1979) and revised by Blatt, Chevron, Quinlan, Schaffer, and Wein (1992). This method consists of coding spontaneous written descriptions of parents for qualitative thematic content as well as for conceptual level and ambivalence toward the parent. Because of its open-ended format, this method has been praised for its ability to elicit internal representations of others with fewer demand characteristics than other methods (Bornstein, 1993). Quinlan, Blatt, Chevron, and Wein (1992) carried out principal components analysis to identify the underlying dimensions of the AOR. They found a four-factor structure of AOR parental descriptions, including the factors Benevolent, Punitive, Ambitious, and Length (Quinlan et al., 1992). Examination of the methodology of

4 STRUCTURE OF PARENTAL REPRESENTATIONS 181 this study revealed a number of potential limitations. First, the authors did not include the Conceptual Level scale, which is a core element to the AOR coding system in assessing the developmental quality of descriptions. In addition, the variable of Length, which is a more peripheral variable of the AOR, was included in the analyses. Quinlan et al. did not provide a theoretical or empirical rationale for excluding the highly relevant Conceptual Level scale while including the less relevant length variable. In addition, they combined maternal and paternal ratings in their analysis. The factor structure revealed by Quinlan et al. (1992) was somewhat counterintuitive. For example the parental qualities strong and successful, which appear related to interpersonal agency, loaded highly on their Benevolent component. Additionally, the fact that Benevolent and Punitive emerged as separate components is contrary to our view that both benevolence and punitiveness reflect aspects of high and low communal behaviors, respectively. To address these counterintuitive findings, we conducted independent principal components analyses of maternal and paternal descriptions as measured with the AOR, including the Conceptual Level scale but excluding the length variable. We hypothesized that the underlying structure of thematic scales of the AOR would be reflected in a simplified factor structure reflecting agency and communion. Agency would be depicted in participants representations of parental striving, mastery, power, and differentiation, whereas communion would be depicted in participants representations of parental affection, love, positive impact, and relatedness. Agency and communion have long been used to capture the interpersonal nature of humanity (Wiggins, 1991). METHOD Participants were 137 male and 142 female undergraduate university students. Reliability for AOR scoring was determined by training five coders over the course of 3 months on the manualized rating procedure developed by Blatt et al. (1992). We conducted a reliability study using 18 sample descriptions, and interrater reliability was established by means of intraclass correlation using a two-way random-effects model with absolute agreement. All but two ratings (ambivalence and nurturance) were above.70, with a range of r = Once interrater reliability was established, all coders rated all parental descriptions. These scores were then averaged across the five coders for each participant, and the resulting scores were used for purposes of analyses. RESULTS The 12 thematic scales and the Conceptual Level and Ambivalence scales were subjected to principal components analyses with Varimax rotation. Analyses were conducted separately for maternal and paternal ratings. We initially conducted separate

5 182 HECK AND PINCUS principal components analyses for men and women. Because these analyses yielded identical solutions, we combined the data, and only the full-sample analyses are presented here. Examination of the scree plot and use of eigenvalues greater than 1.0 suggested a three-component solution accounting for 67.2% of the variance in maternal ratings and 68.7% of the variance in paternal ratings (see Table 1). The three components and their constituent variables were identical in both sets of ratings. As shown in Table 1, the first component was marked by the following qualities: malevolent benevolent, cold warm, nurturant, negative positive ideal, degree of constructive involvement, affection, low punitiveness, and low judgmentalness. We TABLE 1 Principal Components Analyses of AOR Parental Ratings Parent and AOR Parental Quality I II III Mother a Malevolent benevolent Cold warm Nurturant Negative positive ideal Degree of constructive involvement Affection Punitive Judgmental Success Ambition Weak strong Intellectual Conceptual level Ambivalence Father b Cold warm Malevolent benevolent Degree of constructive involvement Nurturant Negative positive ideal Punitive Judgmental Affection Ambition Success Weak strong Intellectual Ambivalence Conceptual level Note. AOR = Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Relations. Primary loadings are in boldface type. Italic type indicates which end of the bipolar rating loads on the factor. a N = 279; 67.2% of variance, Varimax rotation. b N = 279; 68.7% of variance, Varimax rotation.

6 STRUCTURE OF PARENTAL REPRESENTATIONS 183 interpreted this bipolar component to reflect parental Communion. The second component comprised the following qualities: success, ambition, weak strong, and intellectual. We interpreted this component to reflect parental Agency. The third component was made up of the following constructs: conceptual level and ambivalence. We interpreted this component to reflect the structural characteristics of parental representations (Blatt et al., 1992). We computed alpha reliability coefficients for Agency and Communion components for both sets of ratings. Alpha coefficients were as follows:.80 (Paternal Agency),.80 (Paternal Communion),.74 (Maternal Agency), and.74 (Maternal Communion). These reliability values compare favorably to those reported by Quinlan et al (1992) for their components:.56 (Punitive),.55 (Ambitious), and.91 (Benevolent). We did not compute the reliability of the Structure component, because we interpret it to be a nonsubstantive component, that is, Ambivalence and Conceptual Level should not be grouped as a substantive dimension. They load together in this analysis because they are unrelated to thematic content dimensions but should ultimately be scored separately. DISCUSSION These findings are consistent with interpersonal personality theory (Kiesler, 1996; Pincus, 1994). As predicted, the dimensions of Agency and Communion in the AOR comprise parental traits and qualities that are congruent with the definitions of these constructs provided by Wiggins (1991). According to Wiggins (1991), agency [italics added] refers to the condition of being a differentiated individual, and it is manifest in strivings for mastery and power which enhance and protect that differentiation and communion [italics added] refers to the condition of being part of a larger social or spiritual entity, and it is manifested in strivings for intimacy, union, and solidarity with that larger entity (p. 89). These two constructs underlie the interpersonal circumplex (Wiggins, 1979, 1996) and several objective personality inventories based on this model, such as the Interpersonal Adjective Scales (Wiggins, 1995). Such measures have been used extensively to quantify and investigate interpersonal acts, traits, affects, interpersonal problems, and personality disorders (Plutchik & Conte, 1997). Coordinating the structure of the AOR with that of the interpersonal circumplex may aid in developing research and practice that integrates psychodynamic and trait descriptive approaches to personality assessment (Pincus & Ruiz, 1997). The results of this study indicate a factor structure for the AOR that is more consistent with interpersonal theory than those reported by Quinlan et al. (1992). Agency and Communion, in combination with the two structural variables of Ambivalence and Conceptual Level, will be important components to examine in future studies using the AOR system, as they represent the fundamental dimensions of interpersonal functioning as found in internal object relations.

7 184 HECK AND PINCUS REFERENCES Blatt, S. J., Auerbach, J. S., & Levy, K. N. (1997). Mental representations in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process. Review of General Psychology, 1, Blatt, S. J., Chevron, E. S., Quinlan, D. M., Schaffer, C. E., & Wein, S. J. (1992). The Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Representations (Rev. ed.). Unpublished manual, Yale University, Department of Psychiatry. Blatt, S. J., Wein, S. J., Chevron, E., & Quinlan, D. M. (1979). Parental representations and depression in normal young adults. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88, Bornstein, R. F. (1993). Parental representations and psychopathology: A critical review of the empirical literature. In J. Masling & R. F. Bornstein (Eds.), Psychoanalytic perspectives on psychopathology (pp. 1 41). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Kiesler, D. J. (1996). Contemporary interpersonal theory and research. New York: Wiley. Pincus, A. L. (1994). The interpersonal circumplex and the interpersonal theory: Perspectives on personality and its pathology. In S. Strack & M. Lorr (Eds.), Differentiating normal and abnormal personality (pp ). New York: Springer. Pincus, A. L. (1997, August). Beyond complementarity: An object relations perspective. In M. B. Gurtman (Chair), Interpersonal complementarity: Critical questions and future directions. Symposium conducted at the 105th annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Chicago. Pincus, A. L., & Ruiz, M. A. (1997). Parental representations and dimensions of personality: Empirical relations and assessment implications. Journal of Personality Assessment, 68, Plutchik, R., & Conte, H. R. (1997). Circumplex models of personality and emotions. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Quinlan, D. M., Blatt, S. J., Chevron, E. S., & Wein, S. J. (1992). The analysis of descriptions of parents: Identification of a more differentiated factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 59, Wiggins, J. S. (1979). A psychological taxonomy of trait descriptive terms: The interpersonal domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, Wiggins, J. S. (1991). Agency and communion as conceptual coordinates for the understanding and measurement of interpersonal behavior. In W. M. Grove & D. Cicchetti (Eds.), Thinking clearly about psychology: Vol. 2. Personality and psychopathology (pp ). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wiggins, J. S. (1995). Interpersonal Adjective Scales professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. Wiggins, J. S. (1996). An informal history of the interpersonal circumplex tradition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66, Stephanie A. Heck Department of Psychology Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA Received February 14, 2000 Revised May 22, 2000