Vertical Relationships - Power, Status and Leadership

Question 1

Social hierarchy

Answer 1

“Hierarchy is one of those recipes for living that have been evolved, tested, and winnowed through hundreds of generations of human social history” (Campbell, 1975, p. 1103)

Question 2

what is social hierarchy?

Answer 2

• Social hierarchy - an implicit or explicit rank order of individuals or groups with respect to a valued social dimension (Magee and Galinsky, 2008, p.354)
  
  • The social psychology of hierarchies distinguishes:
  • Power (Keltner et al, 2003) - asymmetric control over valued resources
  • Status (Anderson et al, 2012) - admiration/respect in the eyes of others
• Leadership (Van Vugt et al, 2008) - social influence to achieve shared goals

Question 3

functionality pf social hierarchy

Answer 3

· Group level - better coordinated 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

Question 4

hierarchy and coordination

Answer 4

· Basketball - the quintessential team sport:
- Archival data of NBA teams from 11 seasons, primarily from the NBA’s official website
· Measures:
- Hierarchy - salary dispersion
- Intragroup coordination and cooperation - assists, turnovers, defensive rebounds, and field-goal percentage
- Team performance - winning percentage

Question 5

hierarchy and conflict

Answer 5

· Prenatal - testosterone:
- 2D:4D ratio
- 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 with 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 showed that productivity in high testosterone groups was lower than in mixed testosterone groups because they encountered more intragroup conflict.

Question 6

what is social power?

Answer 6

· Social power - asymmetric control over valued resources in social relationships (Keltner et al, 2008)
· Five bases 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

Question 7

power and agency

Answer 7

· The approach-inhibition theory of power (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)

Question 8

power and self-focus

Answer 8

· The Social Distance Theory of Power (Magee & Smith) 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)

Question 9

power and self-focus 2

Answer 9

· 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.
· Results showed that participants took the perception of the person in front of them les when experiencing high compared to low power

Question 10

power and culture

Answer 10

· Participants
- European and Hispanic Americans 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.