Vertical Relationships Flashcards
Social hierarchy
Social hierarchy is an implicit or explicit rank order of individuals or groups with respect to a valued social dimension.
The social psychology of hierarchies distinguishes:
* Power -> asymmetric control over valued responses
* Status -> admiration/respect in the eyes of others
* Leadership -> social influence to achieve shared goals.
Functionality of social hierarchy
Group level -> better coordination and less conflict.
* Coordinates collective locomotion and decision-making.
* Reduces role conflict and increases team performance.
* Without hierarchy, group performance suffers.
Individual level -> higher rank is desirable.
* Access to mates, valued resources, respect and admiration
* Less stress and better health outcomes
Hierarchy and Coordiantion
Basketball – the quintessential team sport. Looking at one of the best basketball teams.
* Archival data of NBA teams from 11 seasons, primarily from the NBA’s official website
Measuring -> Hierarchy: salary dispersion. Intragroup coordination and cooperation: assists, turnovers (reverse-scored), defensive rebounds, and field-goal percentage. Team performance: winning percentage
Findings -> Pay dispersion positively predicts cooperation and coordination -> positively predicted team performance.
Hierarchy and Conflict
Hierarchy reduces intra-group conflict.
Prenatal testosterone -> testosterone: 2D:4D ratio ( length of Digit and ring fingers) , testosterone predicts desire for power.
* Participants -> 109 psychology undergraduate students
* Experimental conditions -> SD of right-hand 2D:4D ratio -> groups of everyone high testosterone participants vs groups of mixed-testosterone participants.
* Procedure -> Form words and sentences from matrix of 16 letters Questionnaire measure of Intra-group conflict “there was conflict in my group”.
* Results -> Results showed that productivity in high testosterone groups was lower than in mixed testosterone groups because they encountered more intragroup conflict. (consisted of those who only wanted to be ‘leaders’)
What is social power?
Five basis of social power ->
* Coercive Power -> ability to administer punishment.
* Reward Power -> ability to administer rewards.
* Expert Power -> special knowledge and skills
* Referent Power -> desirable resources/traits
* Legitimate Power -> legitimacy to prescribe behaviour.
Asymmetric control over valued resources in social relationships.
Approach-inhibition theory of power
power of agency. (Keltner et al., 2003) holds that whilst low-power individuals are oriented towards understanding the needs of the powerful, high-power individuals are oriented towards what they want and how to obtain it. This is because having power or lacking power differentially activates the neurobiological system of approach (BAS) versus inhibition (BIS).
Thus, power liberates, leading to action as well as abstract, independent thinking:
* Greater assertiveness (Galinsky et al., 2003)
* More optimism & greater risk-taking (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006)
* Greater goal-consistent behaviour (Guinote, 2007, 2008)
* Better executive functioning (Smith et al., 2008)
The social distance theory of power
power of self-focus. holds that having power makes people experience less dependency on others and thus feel distant from others. Thus, power is self-focused, leading to overly positive self-aggrandising self-views:
* More positive self-views (Fast et al., 2009)
* Less perspective taking (Galinsky et al., 2006)
* Less empathetic concern (Van Kleef et al., 2008)
* Less likely to consider advice (Tost et al., 2012)
* More likely to cheat (Dubois et al., 2013)
Participants -> 57 psychology undergraduate students
Experimental conditions -> high power: recall and write about a personal incident in which they had power over another individual. Low Power -> recall and write about a personal incident in which someone else had power over them.
Procedure -> With your dominant hand, as quickly as you can, draw a capital letter E on your forehead with the marker provided.
Findings -> Results showed that participants took the perception of the person in front of them less when experiencing high compared to low power.
Power Across Cultures
Method -> participants -> European and Hispanic American participants.
Experimental conditions ->
* Write about personalized power: remember a situation in which they “had power over others, impressed, influenced, acquired status, or were praised by others”.
* Write about socialized power: remember a situation in which they “had the power to help others, gave unsolicited help, assistance, advice, or support to some other person.”
Results showed that Hispanic Americans compared to European and Asian Americans recalled having personalised power less vividly but socialised power more vividly.
