LECTURE 1 & 2: HIEARCHY & POWER Flashcards
What is Social Psychology?
Explores how people perceive, interact with, & are affected by the social world around them
- Includes the impact of groups, culture, & societal norms
- Helps us comprehend why people do what they do, how they perceive others, & how they are influenced by the social environment
What is organizational psychology?
Explores how individuals & groups function within organizations
Topics: employee motivation, leadership, teamwork, job satisfaction
Why Study Organizational Psychology?
- Optimize relationship between people & the work place leading to more efficient & healthier & happier organizations
- useful in any job, team, or org
- helps build effective teams & orgs
Explain the systematic rigour of social & organizational psychology.
Experiments - scientific method; cause & effect
Survey Studies - large samples of workers
Qualitative Research - deeper analysis of context
What is the contingency approach in social & organizational psych?
Theoretical framework the considers context (situational factors) when predicting human behaviour
Behaviour = fixed traits contingent upon the dynamic between an individual & their environment
What 3 factors is an individuals behaviour contingent upon?
Individual - about the person (e.g. attitudes, personality, abilities)
Situational - immediate situation (e.g. peer group, room)
Contextual Factors - broader environment (e.g. policy, law, pandemic)
- All factors can interact or play separate roles
What are the implications of the contingency approach?
- Need to consider the demands of the situation & the context to understand behaviour, not just the person
- Simple explanations of behaviour are wrong: multiple determinants, no one solution
What is a Hiearchy?
- All groups and organizations are structured hierarchically
- A rank order of individuals or groups with respect to a valued social dimension
- Those at the top have more control over resources and deference from subordinates
- Tend to be quite stable
What is a formal hierarchy?
- Formal organizational structure: job titles, reporting structure
- Those at higher levels have more control over resources, more legitimate power
- Functional: Those at the top should have more skills, ability, and motivation than those lower
- not always -
favoritisms, nepotism - Help organizations accomplish goals in an orderly fashion
What is an informal hierarchy?
- Unrelated to formal structure
- As soon as one dimension
(resource or characteristic) is judged to be more important in a group, create hierarchy - Functional : will help the group to achieve its goals
- Hierarchies can change as the group dynamic changes - e.g. friend group
- Examples: friend groups
○ Leader = most popular, most friends, best house, age
Two Key Forms of Hierarchy: Status
Status: one’s position in the hierarchy depends on
the extent to which one is respected or admired by others
- In task-based groups, respect is based on competence on task, expertise
- People judge others’ competence based on:
- Observed task performance (good at what they do = high competence)
- Reputation
- Stereotypes about the group(s) to which a
person belongs (judge based on cues)
Two Key Forms of Hierarchy: Power
Power = the asymmetric control over valued resources in social relationships
Based on:
* Hold more of the resource
* Ability to distribute the resource
* Resources with positive value (rewards)/ may also be negative (punishment)
Name some resources that are unevenly distributed in the workplace that people care about.
- staffing
- tech
- time
- friendships
- information
- funding
- tools
What are power dynamics?
A low power party is dependent on a high-
power party to obtain rewards and avoid punishments
The degree of dependence that a person feels is based on:
* The perceived importance of the resource
* The perceived alternatives (scarce, non- substitutable)
What is the relation between one’s formal hierarchy position and holding power and status?
The higher up on the hierarchy, the more power & status one has
What is the relation between one’s informal hierarchy position and holding power and status?
- Informal hierarchies tend to form as a result of one’s status
- Not necessarily have power - do they have power over resources?
○ E.g. liking & friendship = resource
What are long-term effects of having power?
- Experience of power changes a person’s psychological states, becomes a property of person
- The effects of power can endure beyond a particular context where it was experienced
- Transcends
What are experimental examples of manipulating feelings of power(lessness)?
- Having more (vs. less) actual control over resources (e.g., Zimbardo’s prison experiment)
- Recalling a time when you had power over others vs. when others had power over you
- Being exposed (subliminally, supraliminally) to power-related words vs. not
- Power poses (big controversy)
According to the behavioural approach theory, how does having more power affect people?
- Experiencing greater power leads to activation of behavioural approach system:
- Creates increased sensitivity to rewards
- Approach motivation, greater focus on goals
- Could be prosocial or antisocial
- Greater positive affect: hope, happiness
According to the behavioural approach theory, How does having less power affect people?
- leads to activation of behavioural inhibition system
- Creates increased sensitivity to punishment
- avoidance motivation
- greater negative affect: fear, stress, anxiety
How does having power reduce social attentiveness?
Those with more (vs. less) power are:
- more likely to see others in an instrumental/objective fashion
-Pros: increases org efficiency - less concerned with how others see them
*less susceptible to conformity - less concerned with others’ internal experiences
- less empathetic
- less likely to engage in perspective taking
How does having less power increase social attentiveness?
Those with less power are more concerned with
understanding:
- the powerful
- their environment
- Why? want to mimic
How does power change behaviour & thinking?
Those with more power are more likely to:
* Take action: positive and negative
* Initiate negotiation
* Take
* More optimistic: see potential gains, ignore potential losses
* Heightened sense of control
* Increases abstract thinking
How does having power make you act more like your true self?
- Having more (vs. less) power increases correspondence between disposition and behaviour
- More communal people: act more selflessly, build relationships
- More exchange oriented: act more selfish, less relationship building
What is psychological empowerment?
A person’s perception of having control, influence & autonomy over their tasks
Enhances job satisfaction and well-being
Increases motivation and engagement
Fosters creativity and innovation
Leads to higher performance
T/F: power can endure beyond the social context
TRUE:
power has the potential to become a psychological property of the individual
- can alter basic thought, emotions, & behaviour
What are the implications of power for organizations?
- Be deliberate who is given power
- Selection of leaders should consider peoples values
- Train leaders to engage in perspective taking
Can lead to sharing of information and better decision making
How?
Accountability
Role playing
Active listening skills: genuine curiosity
Remembering a time
Which of the following is not true about powerful people and social attentiveness?
A. the powerful are less dependent on others and capable of satisfying their own needs and desires without relying on or needing anyone’s resources but their own
B. the powerful are less concerned with how others see them or judge their actions and are less attentive to others’ internal experiences
C. the powerful are motivated to understand the needs of their less powerful counterparts and the changes in their environment, leading them to systematically consider factors and forces that compel others to act as they do
C
What are the 3 main effects of power?
A. social attentiveness, makes the person, reveals the person
B. makes the person, reveals the person, influences the person
C. social attentiveness, reveals the person, influences the person
A
Which of the following does not activate the psychological effects of power?
A. Having control over resources
B. Recalling a time when one had power over others
C. Being assertive
D.Being subliminally exposed to words related to power
C
