Week 5: Power Flashcards
What is Power?
Asymmetric control over valued resources in a social relationship
-> captures the sense of dependence between two (or more) parties
-> Implies a group’s control over its own fate (and the fate of other groups)
What is Power? In Intergroup relations… Dominant Group
Majority group/high-power
Group in society that holds position of power
Establish values and norms - typically benefit the ingroup
Enjoy certain privileges (e.g., better housing, education, income, etc.)
What is Power? In intergroup relations… subordinate group
Minority group/lower-power group
Groups that are treated unequally due to membership in particular social group (e.g., ethnic, racial, religious, sexuality, gender)
Minority does not refer to size
-> e.g., dominant group in South Africa was White South Africans who make up about 10% of the population
Power is linked to social status
Power -> asymmetrical control over resources
Status -> social prestige and respect
Power and status often go together and are correlated in the real world
> those with higher power tend to have higher status, e.g., social class -> combines power and hierarchical rank
Social group memberships are associated with different levels of power, e.g., social class
People use social class as a tool to compare their own social standing to others
Social Distance Theory of Power
Psychological distance: a sense of separation between the self and other instances (e.g., other people, events, time, place)
Social distance - separation between self and others
Power produces asymmetric social distance
Social Distance Theory of Power - Higher vs. Lower Power
Those with higher power experience more social distance from others, compared to those with lower power
High-power individuals pay less attention to the mental states of others compared to low-power individuals
Having low-power is associated with being better at - e.g., reading the emotion of others, having empathic concerns over others, engaging in perspective taking
Power as Control
The powerless are more likely to form complex, non-stereotypic impression of the higher-power group; this is because they pay more attention to the powerful (who control resources)
The powerful pay less attention and engage in more stereotyping of the lower-power group -> this serves to maintain the status quo
Stereotypes of those with high- & low-power serve to justify their social positions. The stereotype content model applies to social classs:
- Upper class: high power and status -> more competence but low warmth (cold-but-competent)
- Lower class: low power and status -> low competence, but high warmth (incompetent-but-warm)
Power as Control, example of Upper-Class Representation of ‘JOHN’
John makes $3,000,000 each year. He owns a vacation home in Hawaiii, has a private yacht, and owns three expensive sports cars.
Power as Control, example of Middle-Class Representation of ‘JOHN’
John has a full-time job that pays an average salary. He owns his own home, but still has a sizable mortgage. he drives a 5-year-old car that he bought second-hand
Power as Control, example of Lower-Class Representation of ‘JOHN’
John has been homeless for the past 3 years and is currently staying in a shelter. He rarely has enough money for food and sometimes will dig through trash cans to find something to eat
Power as Control - upper, lower, and middle-class
Upper-class targets judged as more competent than warm
Lower-class targets judged as more warm than competent
Middle-class targets judged as equally warm and competent
When considering contact across class lines…
Higher-status people tend to talk down using the competence downshift
Lower-status people tend to talk up by emphasising competence
Social Cognition of Social Class
Lower class individuals favour contextual over dispositinal explanations for social events, i.e., they explain various phenomena as happening due to reasons beyond an individual’s control (external factors); this is in part because they have lower perceived social control
This makes sense because: higher class strata enjoy more opportunity - rich environments, whereas those in lower class strate face more resources - and opportunity-impoverished environments
Perceived Social Class
Compared to objective social class indicators such as educaiton and occupation, subjective social class tends to be a better predictor of various life outcomes such as health and happiness -> subjective social class tends to be moderately and positively correlated with objective social class
Estimating Pay Gaps - Kiatpongsan & Norton (2014)
Used surveys from 55, 2000 participants in 40 countries
Asked participants:
> how much money they thought corporate CEOs made compared with an ‘unskilled’ factory worker (estimate pay ratio)
> How much more pay they thought CEOs should make compared to the ‘unskilled’ factory worker (ideal pay ratio)
> Compared these estimates to actual pay (actual pay ratio)
The actual pay ratios were only available for 16 countries
People tend to drastically underestimate the actual pay gap and wish for a smaller pay gap
Growing Levels of Inequality
The richest eight individuals own the same amount of money as 50% of the world
The richest 1% has more wealth than the combined total of 99% of the world
The richest 20% of US owns 88.9% of total wealth
Outcomes of Inequality
Health and social problems are worse in more unequal countries
Index of:
- life expectancy
- Math and Literacy
- Infant Mortality
- Homicides
- Imprisonment
- Teenage Births
- Trust
- Obesity
- Mental Illness (incl. drug and alcohol addiction)
- Social Mobility
The higher the income inequality, the worse the index of health and social problems
Perceived Inequality - are perceptions or objective indicators of inequality a better predictor of outcomes?
It’s not just about objective inequality - perceptions of inequality predicts detrimental outcomes just as well as objective inequality… and sometimes it is even a better predictor.
Other findings show that the perceived fairness of inequality better predicts outcomes than perceptions of inequality itself.
Wealth Categorisation - the fit hypothesis
Higher inequality makes wealth a more fitting social category to understand the social world
Conclusion - archival evidence demonstrates that when economic inequality was higher, so too was the tendency for books and media publications to refer to wealth categories.
Wealth Categorisation - How to manipulate inequality and social class?
Participants often have very strong a priori beliefs of levels of inequality in their societies.
So… Peters et al., 2022 examined whether people in societies with higher inequality were - more likely to refer to wealth categories when describing their social world; more likely to value information about others’ wealth
Participants always assigned to middle-income group
Wealth Categorisation - Number of participants that mention wealth groups in high vs. low inequality conditions
Finding:
participants who were placed in a more unequal society were more likely to spontaneously mention wealth groups in their written description of life in that society
Wealth Categorisation - the likelihood of mentioning wealth-related attributes in high vs. low inequality conditions
Findings: participants who were placed in a more unequal society were more likely to indicate that it was important to know about a stranger’s economic status when trying to understand what they are like as a person
Wealth Categorisation - Number of Participants that mention wealth groups in high vs. low inequality conditions
Findings:
Participants who were placed in a more unequal society were more likely to spontaneously mention wealth groups in their written descriptions of life in that society
Wealth Categorisation - The likelihood of mentioning wealth-related attributes in high vs. low inequality conditions
Finding:
Participants who were placed in a more unequal society were more likely to indicate that it was important to know about a stranger’s economic status when trying to understand what they are like as a person
Wealth Categorisation - Conclusions and Implications
Higher inequality enhances social categorisation along class lines
- when inequality is greater, people will make greater references to wealth categories in their language
- they are also more likely to stereotype people based on their social class
- this supports the fit hypothesis
Other Outcomes of Inequality
Inequality can also have a range of downstream consequences
Greater perceived inequality leads to:
- feeling poor
- greater desire for wealth
- greater desire for status
- enhanced perception of others as competitive and individualistic
Intergroup Helping
- Helping is universally viewed as desirable and prosocial behaviour
- Yet, asking and receiving help tends to denote lower power
- Helping and being helped reflect and reinforce power hierarchy between the helper and recipient
Intergroup Helping - traditional focus of helping research has been on the individual, not the group, but…
When helper’s and recipients’ social identities are salient, helping relations should be analysed as a intergroup interaction
Intergroup helping relations between structurally unequal groups involve mechanism that could reinforce or challenge existing inequality
Receiving help could threaten social identity
- self-esteem affected -> reinforce stereotypes that disadvantaged group cannot make it on their own
- seeking and receiving help from members of a higher status group may carry with it the stigma of inferiority and dependency
Types of Helping
Autonomy-oriented help: providing the recipients with the tools to solve their problems on own. Implies viewing recipients with agency and efficacy.
Dependency-oriented help: providing the recipients with the full solution to the problem. Implies viewing the recipients as unable to contribute towards solving their own problems, thereby reinforcing dependency.
When we view intergroup helping dynamics through lens of group-based power, we expect:
High-power groups to provide more dependency-oriented help towards low-power groups -> offering dependency-oriented help associated with more paternalistic beliefs
Low-Power groups to seek and receive autonomy-oriented help from high-power groups
Intergroup Helping - Households were randomly selected to receive cash or vouchers targeted communities living in poverty
Cash-transfers viewed as more autonomy-oriented compared to vouchers - > provided freedom to recipients to choose how to spend their money
Cash recipients also reported feeling more empowered and having more life improvements compared to voucher recipients
