In psychology, unmitigated communion is focusing on others while excluding an individual's self. It is opposed to unmitigated agency, which is focusing on self while excluding others. Unmitigated communion is portrayed as a way of being concerned with others excessively and placing other human beings' needs or wants before one's own. Unmitigated communion and unmitigated agency are also correlated with unusual behaviour and psychological problems.
Background and history Unmitigated communion was first introduced by David Bakan in the year 1966. Unmitigated communion originated from an analysis of two aspects of behaviour and personality: agency and communion. Bakan defined communion as a focus on relationship or interrelation with others and a focus that more characterises women compared to men in the culture, whereas agency indicates the focus on an individual's self or autonomy. It is believed that communion is referred to as a measure of psychological femininity. However, it is claimed that now communion is perceived to reflect a particular part of female gender-related traits, a communal orientation. Bakan (1996) had never explicitly pinpointed the construct of unmitigated communion, which was developed by other psychologists such as Vicki S. Helgeson and Heidi L. Fritz. Nevertheless, Bakan believed that high levels of communion could be mitigated by a personal sense of agency. Thus, the agency in the unmitigated communion is absolutely absent. Unmitigated communion is different from communion as unmitigated communion is the exaggerated version of communion. Communion can be viewed as a caring act toward other people in a positive way, whereas unmitigated communion can be seen as a psychological distress. In addition, communion is associated with the belief that other individuals are valuable, while unmitigated communion is not affiliated with any good or bad view of others.
Causes of unmitigated communion A study from Carnegie Mellon University shows that there are four main causes of unmitigated communion behaviour which includes the way a person was raised, modelling of a family member especially mother, lack of self-esteem as well as genetics. However, the most accurate and possible cause for unmitigated communion is the combination of genetics, which might be inherited from parents, and socialisation, where the environment and surroundings affect the way a person behaves. For instance, poor and unsupportive family surroundings and social environment would lead to high unmitigated communion behaviour. It is claimed that adolescents with high unmitigated communion would more likely to be raised in a family with less expressive parents. In addition, an individual with high unmitigated communion would tend to come from less cohesive family.
Roles of unmitigated communion
Over-involvement with others Over-involvement with others means that people with high unmitigated communion are too unreasonably involved in other people's problems and treat others' issues as their own. Additionally, high unmitigated communion individuals tend to feel responsible for helping others and frequently have thoughts about other individuals' problems. Therefore, the higher a person scores at unmitigated communion, the more frequent and common that person would be involved in others' problems and be affected. In addition, an individual with strong unmitigated communion would tend to feel more stressful events eventuates.
Caretaking Caretaking refers to an action where individuals with unmitigated communion are more strongly correlated to support provision compared to communion. Therefore, individuals with high unmitigated communion would tend to exhibit "helping behaviours" in an extreme way. In a study about adjustment to heart disease, couples who scored relatively high in unmitigated communion would be more likely to be overprotective with the other partner. In addition, according to a study of college students and adults, unmitigated communion is associated with self-reports of interpersonal problems such as intrusive, overly nurturant, as well as self-sacrificing.
Imbalanced relationship An imbalanced relationship is a situation where individuals with high unmitigated communion would feel uncomfortable receiving support from others. One reason for the imbalanced relationship is that individuals with unmitigated communion assume that not receiving any help from others could control over the relationship among friends. Individuals characterised by unmitigated communion do not expect that others would support as they are afraid that others would not respond to the needs. Therefore, unmitigated communion individuals would be more likely to drop the expectations to minimise any disappointment. People with high unmitigated communion also feel that their problems should not burden others to avoid damage in the relationship.
Motives for helping The motives for helping are likely to be different for individuals with high unmitigated communion than for people with high communion. Although unmitigated communion and communion are similar as they are correlated with providing support and related to empathy, the motives are entirely different. Individuals with high communion would tend to help out others genuinely. However, individuals who scored high on unmitigated communion would be more likely to help others in order to improve their self worth in front of others
Neglect of the self Individuals with high unmitigated communion are correlated with self-neglect indicators, which include being exploitable, difficulties in declaring one's needs, and hindering self-effacement from keeping away from conflict with others. The higher an individual's score on unmitigated communion, the stronger the feeling of responsibility for others. Thus, it would be less likely for them to prioritise themselves.
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