title: Is job performance independent from career success? A conceptual distinction between competence and agency.
abstract: Adopting a social approach to social judgment, we conducted five studies to validate a conceptual distinction between agency and competence traits. Studies 1-3 revealed that competence traits (e.g., skillful) are associated with job performance, whereas agentic traits (e.g., ambitious) are associated with career success. Study 4 showed that only agency predicted the amount of money people are likely to earn: the more a given trait was considered as agentic, the more it was associated with high monetary values. Study 5 highlighted the predominance of agency traits over competence traits in the evaluation of an employee applying for a promotion. Nevertheless, participants asserted that competence was the main criterion they used to judge the applicant. Implications of the conceptual distinction between agency and competence for social cognition are discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Paris 8 LAPPS, Paris, France. patrick.mollaret@univ-paris8.fr.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mollaret
authors.affiliation: University of Reims Champagne Ardenne, Laboratoire C2S, Reims, France.
authors.forename: Delphine
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Miraucourt
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D000066477:Work Performance
keywords: Agency; competence; social judgment; traits