Vertical Relationships II Flashcards
What is social status?
According to social and organizational psychological theory, people care deeply about their own social worth or social reputation.
Respect & Admiration:
* The extent to which an individual or group is respected or admired by others.
Deference:
Status equals the amount of voluntary deference one receives.
Who gains social status
High social status is given to those individuals who have competencies that are valuable to the group and are willing to advance group goals:
Committed group members (Willer, 2009)
* Self-less and generous group members (Flynn et al., 2012; Hardy & Can Vugt, 2006)
* Extraversion (Anderson et al., 2001)
* Dominance (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009)
* Competence displaying (Anderson et al., 2006)
Gaining social status study
Participants -> 71 undergraduate students
Procedure ->
* 6-person Public Goods game with initial endowment of $5, in which player decides how much of $1 they contribute to public good
* Any contribution to public good is doubled and equally divided between all players. If all players contribute, they can double their endowment, but any free rider can benefit without taking the risk of losing their contribution.
Design ->
* Participants were either paired with high ($.95) or low ($.05) contributing player.
Key outcome measure:
* Rate status: honourable, prestigious, respected.
Findings ->
Participants paired with a high contributing partner assigned higher status to their partner, who was thought to be more motivated to help the group.
High status’ other orientation
High status leads to greater other-orientation and pro-sociality.
* Perspective taking (empathetic with other group members)
* Generosity
* Pursue collective insights.
Participants -> 396 working adults from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Status Manipulation -> Recall of high / low status episode, recall of high / low power episode (scenario remember)
Procedure -> spatial perspective-taking task
Findings -> High status participants showed increased levels of perspective taking, but high-power participants showed reduced levels of perspective taking.
Leadership
Process of influencing others in a manner that enhances their contribution to the realisation of group goals.
Participants -> 86 working adults
Measures ->
* Status (e.g., “To what extent does your position at work give you high status in the eyes of others?”)
* Power (authority to hire and fire people in their organizations)
* Interpersonal Conflict (e.g., “I often have personal disagreements with others at my place of work”)
Power without status -> Individuals with high power but without high status reported greater relationship conflict at work. High power and high status -> relationship conflict is low.
Power with perspective-taking
Participants -> 256 undergraduates assigned to dyads.
Social Power Manipulation -> Assigned to either boss or employee role.
Procedure -> Perspective-taking exercise or control, modified version of the hidden-profile ‘murder-mystery’ decision task.
* Participants received a packet containing a series of interviews from a fictional homicide investigation, a list of suspects, and a map. They had 15 min to read their packet and take notes for a meeting with their partner. The materials contained 23 clues that were incriminating or exonerating for each of 3 male suspects (E, B, and M). One partner was randomly assigned to receive more unique clues (8) than the other (2), thus the pair that was able to share these unique clues would be more likely to solve the case.
Findings -> Perspective-taking training for high power participants (boss) yielded the greatest improvement for dyadic outcome. Only If they actually work together as a team and exchanged information – then they are more successful in the murder mystery. Baseline = no training received, perspective training = received training. If the boss received perspective training = better results.
Paternalistic leadership
A leadership style that combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence.
* managers take a personal interest in workers’ off-the-job lives and attempt to promote workers’ personal welfare.
* people in authority consider it an obligation to provide protection to those under their care and in exchange expect loyalty and deference.
* prevalent and effective in many business cultures, such as in the Middle East, Pacific Asia, and Latin America
Paternalistic leadership study
Participants -> 87 American and 70 Japanese undergraduate students
Outcome Measures -> the extent to which participants felt responsible for: (a) cutting their own salary (b) the employees who received pay cuts (c) the employees they fired (d) the families of the fired employees (e) a year later there was an increase in crime in the area.
Findings -> Japanese participants felt more responsibility for others across a wider range of targets.
