Contemporary research on human sociality is heavily influenced by the social identity approach, positioning social categorization as the primary mechanism governing social life. Building on the distinction between agency and identity in the individual self (“I” vs. “Me”), we emphasize the analogous importance of distinguishing collective agency from collective identity (“We” vs. “Us”). While collective identity is anchored in the unique characteristics of group members, collective agency involves the adoption of a shared subjectivity that is directed toward some object of our attention, desire, emotion, belief, or action. These distinct components of the collective self are differentiated in terms of their mental representations, neurocognitive underpinnings, conditions of emergence, mechanisms of social convergence, and functional consequences. Overall, we show that collective agency provides a useful complement to the social categorization approach, with unique implications for multiple domains of human social life, including collective action, responsibility, dignity, violence, dominance, ritual, and morality.

当代人类社会性研究深受社会认同方法的影响，将社会分类定位为支配社会生活的主要机制。基于个体自我中的能动性和身份（“我”与“我”）之间的区别，我们强调将集体能动性与集体身份（“我们”与“我们”）区分开来的类似重要性。虽然集体认同植根于群体成员的独特特征，但集体代理涉及采用共同的主体性，该主体性指向我们关注、渴望、情感、信仰或行动的某些对象。集体自我的这些不同组成部分在其心理表征、神经认知基础、出现条件、社会融合机制和功能后果方面有所不同。