ABSTRACT
Chan, Wang, and Ybarra take an evolutionary point of view and discuss that in order to survive, humans must affiliate with cooperative others. To thrive, humans must pursue skills and goals. It will be explored how evaluating other people on the two dimensions of communion and agency is adaptive in service of these two fundamental needs of surviving and thriving. In particular, communion serves primarily to detect who poses a threat to group life and should be avoided; agency serves primarily to detect who poses an opportunity for goal pursuit and should be leveraged. It will be shown how knowing whether others are communal and agentic can help people acquire status and assess whether others will be suitable partners for long-term relationships, in particular mating and parenting.
