Use of Socially Dependent Bases of Power: French and Raven's Theory Applied to Workgroup Leadership1

This study examines how supervisors from three different organizations use social power in workgroups. A sample of 127 leaders completed a self-report questionnaire describing social influence attempts using a scale derived from French and Raven's (1959) five bases of social power. The results show no significant differences between organizations in use of the bases of social power. Referent and Expert powers were used significantly more frequently by these leaders than Legitimate, Reward, and Coercive powers. The number of subordinates supervised within the workgroup was significantly correlated with increased use of Coercive power by the workgroup leader. These results are discussed in terms of the potential for using socially dependent influence to explain leaders' direction of workgroup members.     

Influence in the Ivory Tower: Examining the Appropriate Use of Social Power in the University Classroom

A study was conducted to determine how appropriate university students feel it is for professors to use varying bases of social power as a means of influence. Participants ( n  = 91) completed a modified version of the Interpersonal Power Inventory ( Raven, Schwarzwald, & Koslowsky, 1998 ) and a demographic questionnaire. Students rated the use of soft power as significantly more appropriate than harsh power. Repeated-measures ANOVA indicated that informational and expert power were thought to be the most appropriate bases for professors to use, and a gender effect was observed such that female students rated the use of social power in the classroom as significantly less appropriate than did male students. Implications for university instructors and other power holders are discussed.     

The Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Global Social Power Based on French and Raven's Power Taxonomy1

A measure of global power was developed based on French and Raven's (1959) definition of social power as the potential of an agent to influence a target. A sample of 346 graduate students responded to a questionnaire assessing their perceptions of the power of their supervising professors in paid assistantship duties. Power was measured using established scales of the French and Raven 5 power bases in addition to the newly developed global power measure. Results indicate that the global power scale (a) has strong internal consistency, (b) is significantly related to each of the 5 individual power bases, and (c) significantly accounts for additional variance in compliance beyond the measures of the 5 power bases, beyond the sum of the bases, and beyond a measure of resistance and control.     

The Rokeach Value Survey and Social Desirability

Abstract

Social influence and social power were examined in two studies. In Study 1, samples of U.S. students who had been presented with randomly ordered lists of 13 influence tactics and power bases predicted the likelihood that an influence agent would use the tactics or power bases, for seven status-differentiated, hypothetical relationships. Lower status agents were perceived to use influence tactics, and higher status agents were perceived to use power bases. In Study 2, female students were assigned either a supervisory role or a subordinate role. The participants in the supervisory and subordinate roles identified power bases or influence tactics that had been rated by the participants in Study 1 as commonly used by higher or lower status influence agents, respectively. The results of the present study seem to support the notion that social influence and social power are separate strategies.     

School Psychologist and Teacher Perceptions of Social Power in Consultation

Social power has been recognized as central to understanding aspects of school consultation. This study examined school psychologist and teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of 11 bases of social power that psychologists might use with initially resistant teachers. Results suggested that psychologists and teachers held similar views about power within consultation: Both groups rated expert and informational power as the most effective bases, ranked the 11 power bases in a similar way, and indicated that psychologists would be more effective using “soft” (i.e., subtle, positive, noncoercive) bases rather than “hard” bases. Findings also suggested that the groups held different views of social power: Psychologists rated impersonal and personal reward power as more effective than did teachers, and teachers rated psychologists' use of legitimate position, informational, and legitimate dependence power as more effective than did psychologists.     

Mapping explicit social motives of achievement,power, and affiliation onto the five‐factor model of personality

Engeser, S. & Langens, T. (2010). Mapping explicit social motives of achievement, power, and affiliation onto the five‐factor model of personality. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. Previous research has shown that explicit motives are meaningfully related to the five‐factor model of personality. The present study extends this research by using different measures of the explicit social motives of achievement, power and affiliation, and by employing measures of both approach and avoidance of these motives. Correlational and factor analyses demonstrated that explicit motives of achievement, power, and affiliation, both approach and avoidance components of these motives, can be consistently mapped onto personality trait measures of the five‐factor model. Implications of this general finding, along with some exceptions, are discussed with regard to further research.     

Power and conflict in cooperative and competitive contexts

Power and conflict are classic research topics in organizational theory and important practical management issues. The goal of this article was to analyse the influence of supervisor power bases and goal interdependence situations over intragroup conflict. The study involved the participation of 401 workers from a range of social service organizations. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that (a) supervisor personal power bases were negatively associated with task and relationship conflict; (b) supervisor position power bases were positively associated with relationship conflict; (c) cooperative environments were negatively associated with task and relationship conflict; and (d) that goal interdependence moderates the negative consequences of the use of position power. The implications for research and managerial practices are discussed.     

The Multidimensionality of Motivation for Jewish Religious Behavior: Content, Structure, and Relationship to Religious Identity

The present study examined the content and structure of self–reported motivation for Jewish religious behavior. Initial items were generated from comprehensive and detailed responses to a semi–structured interview and an open–ended questionnaire. Principal component factor analysis with orthogonal rotation was carried out on the responses of a sample of 323 research participants to two parallel sets of the 111 items produced by the above process. The factor structures for each of these sets of items were highly similar to each other and consisted of the following five reliable factors: belief in a divine order, ethnic identity, social activity, family activity, and upbringing. These factors appear to reflect the way religious behavior can contribute to the satisfaction of a number of general human motives. Persons with different religious identities were found to attribute their performance of religious ritual to different motives, providing a partial explanation for the apparent anomaly of the performance of religious ritual by persons who identify themselves as secular.     

The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes

Evidence from four studies demonstrates that social observers tend to perceive a “false consensus” with respect to the relative commonness of their own responses. A related bias was shown to exist in the observers' social inferences. Thus, raters estimated particular responses to be relatively common and relatively unrevealing concerning the actors' distinguishing personal dispositions when the responses in question were similar to the raters' own responses; responses differing from those of the rater, by contrast, were perceived to be relatively uncommon and revealing of the actor. These results were obtained both in questionnaire studies presenting subjects with hypothetical situations and choices and in authentic conflict situations. The implications of these findings for our understanding of social perception phenomena and for our analysis of the divergent perceptions of actors and observers are discussed. Finally, cognitive and perceptual mechanisms are proposed which might account for distortions in perceived consensus and for corresponding biases in social inference and attributional processes.     

Predictive validity of the theory of planned behaviour: the role of questionnaire format and social desirability

The present study was designed to assess the predictive validity of a theory of planned behaviour extended to include self‐identity, in the context of health‐related food choice. Following criticism of the use of questionnaires in social cognitive research, the impact of questionnaire format (random vs structured) and social desirability on questionnaire responses was assessed. Findings indicated that intention was the principal determinant of food choice; attitude, subjective norm and self‐identity were independently predictive of intention. There was only weak evidence to suggest effects of social desirability or questionnaire format on component relationships. The present study indicates that the impact of questionnaire format and social desirability on models such as the theory of planned behaviour is minimal, and that such models are robust predictors of food choice. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploratory study of Machiavellianism and bases of social power in bankers

This study focused on relationships between Machiavellianism in subordinates and perceived social power bases of supervisors in a sample of 168 bank officers in the western United States. Regression analyses showed no significant relationships between subordinates' Machiavellianism scores and four supervisory power bases subscales. The association between scores on Machiavellianism and coercive power reached p < .06.     

The social control of generalized imitation

Instructions, discrimination procedures, and sources of reinforcement were manipulated in order to determine the bases for the maintained "non-reinforced" imitations observed in generalized imitation research. Six girls received imitation training from two experimenters. One experimenter modelled only reinforced responses; the other modelled only non-reinforced responses. The children imitated all responses when no reinforced alternative was available, even though results of choice procedures and special instructions clearly demonstrated that they discriminated reinforced from non-reinforced responses. Instructions not to perform non-reinforced imitations immediately eliminated these behaviors. It is suggested that social setting events may be largely responsible for generalized imitation.     

Book Review of Health and the Construction of the Individual. J. Ogden. London: Routledge, 2002. i–viii + 130 pages ISBN 0415233070

Abstract

Recent theoretical and empirical research has challenged the assumption of health psychologists employing social cognitive models that beliefs can confidently be inferred on the basis of questionnaire responses. It is charged that responses to questionnaires are a function of the intelligibility of the items, constructs and theoretical framework to survey participants. To investigate this contention, cognitions specified by Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) were measured with respect to intentions to use a condom and intentions to use dental floss. Three alternative formats of a questionnaire which varied the order of presentation of PMT items were distributed to student samples. Analyses showed that while questionnaire format did not affect the reliability of cognition measures, there was some variation in the significance and strength of correlations between PMT cognitions across formats. Individual differences in social desirability and salience of the target behaviour had small and predictable effects upon reliabilities and intercorrelations. Implications for the measurement of health beliefs and the status of questionnaire responses are outlined and suggestions are made for controlling bias associated with respondents' capacity to “read” a questionnaire.     

ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE FOR THE ACCURACY OF BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: LONG-TERM RETEST AND OBSERVER RATINGS

Although the predictive validity of biographical information has been extensively documented in a variety of environments, the extent to which responses to a biodata questionnaire are accurate has not been adequately investigated. In particular, the accuracy of unverifi-able biodata items has not been determined. Evidence of accuracy was obtained in the present study using a test-retest design and informed external observers for verification. Responses were obtained from 237 study participants and 200 observers. Factor and item re-test correlations were obtained for subject and observer data, and responses were compared using product-moment correlations and t tests. Results provide evidence that many responses to a biodata questionnaire are accurate. Sources of inaccuracy were assessed, including the impact of social desirability, and applications of the findings to industrial uses of biodata were noted.     

Predicting Dental Flossing Behavior: The Role of Implicit and Explicit Responses and Beliefs

The study examined the ability of implicit responses to predict dental flossing behavior. It was hypothesized that adding implicit responses would increase the predictive power of models containing variables suggested by social cognitive theories. To test the hypothesis, 125 participants completed measures of social cognitive variables (e.g., self-efficacy, task-efficacy, planning intention, behavior intention) and performed a procedure designed to measure their implicit responses to flossing. Flossing behavior was measured with retrospective self-reports and a follow-up measure of flossing. As predicted, the addition of implicit responses to models containing the social cognitive variables increased the predictive power of the models for both the self-report and follow-up measures.     

Unrelated look-alikes: Replicated study of personality similarity and qualitative findings on social relatedness

Twin research critics assert that similar treatment of monozygotic (MZ) twins results from their matched physical appearance, and that their similar treatment explains their within-pair behavioral similarities. A genetic explanation of MZ twins’ resemblance is, thereby, dismissed. To address this challenge, Segal (2013) found a lack of similarity in personality and self-esteem in pairs of unrelated look-alike individuals. The present study describes a constructive replication of that work, confirming these findings. It also presents an analysis of social relatedness within U-LA pairs. Most participants expressed moderate to little social closeness and familiarity, upon meeting and subsequently, over an average 8.98 year period (SD = 7.82). A qualitative analysis of U-LAs’ responses to unstructured social relationship questions further explored their perceptions of, and responses to, their physical resemblance. Participants were generally divided as to perceptions of “some” physical resemblance and “no” physical resemblance upon meeting; two-thirds indicated “some” resemblance at the time of the study. Reactions to their physical resemblance were distributed among positive reactions, negative reactions and within-pair contrasts. Theories addressing the bases of social relatedness provide context for these findings.     

Teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying

Background. Comparison of teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying is important for considering the implications for reports of its incidence in schools, for the study of developmental trends in children's and adolescents' perceptions of the phenomenon and for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions designed to combat bullying. Aims. To investigate the effects of gender, teacher/pupil status and, for pupils, bullied/non‐bullied (target/non‐target) status and age on the definition of bullying. Samples. Teachers (N = 225: 158 women, 67 men) and pupils (N = 1,820: 466 boys, 460 girls were 11–12 years old, year 7, and 415 boys, 479 girls were 13–14 years, year 9) in 51 UK secondary schools participated in a questionnaire survey. A total of 557 of the pupils (117 girls and 117 boys aged 11–12 years, and 197 girls and 126 boys aged 13–14 years) reported that they had been bullied at some time in their present school. Methods. Written questionnaire responses to the question, ‘Say what you think bullying is’ have been content analysed to derive two sets of categories, one of bullying behaviour and the other of effects of bullying on the target. Results. Regarding both bullying behaviour and the effects of bullying on the target, teachers – by comparison with pupils – have been found to express more comprehensive ideas in their definitions. Specifically, pupils compared with teachers are more likely to restrict their definitions to direct bullying (verbal and/or physical abuse) and are less likely to refer to social exclusion, a power imbalance in the bully's favour and the bully's intention to cause the target hurt or harm and to feel threatened. Analysis of definitions on the bases of sex, pupil age and target/non‐target status show that: targets are more likely than non‐targets are to refer to the bully's physically and verbally abusive behaviour, and for Year 7 compared with Year 9 pupils, to suggest that bullies socially exclude targets; girls are more likely than boys are to mention verbal abuse and the effects on the target of ‘Feels hurt/harm’, but boys are more likely than girls are to construe bullying as involving repetition; older pupils are more likely than younger ones are to refer to a power imbalance in the bully's favour but, for bully targets, younger ones compared with older ones are more likely to invoke the idea of social exclusion in their definitions. Conclusions. The most important implication of the findings of this study that there are important differences between teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying is that teachers need to listen carefully to what pupils have to say about bullying and work with and help them to develop their conceptions of the phenomenon. Some teachers, too, need to develop their conceptions of bullying.     

Experiences of Countertransference: Reports of Clinical Psychology Students

While historically linked with psychoanalysis, countertransference is recognised as an important component of the experience of therapists, regardless of the therapeutic modality. This study considers the implications of this for the training of psychologists. Fifty‐five clinical psychology trainees from four university training programmes completed an anonymous questionnaire that collected written reports of countertransference experiences, ratings of confidence in managing these responses, and supervision in this regard. The reports were analysed using a process of thematic analysis. Several themes emerged including a desire to protect or rescue clients, feeling criticised or controlled by clients, feeling helpless, and feeling disengaged. Trainees varied in their reports of awareness of countertransference and the regularity of supervision in this regard. The majority reported a lack of confidence in managing their responses, and all reported interest in learning about countertransference. The implications for reflective practice in postgraduate psychology training are discussed.     

社会心理学视角下权力理论的发展与比较

权力作为人类社会的基本特征之一, 一直受到社会心理学家的关注, 实证研究成果丰硕, 理论构建也日益完善。首先, 权力从结构变量发展为心理变量, 有外显、内隐之分, 控制感是其核心要素。其次, 社会心理学领域最具代表性的3个权力理论为“接近-抑制理论”、“情境聚焦理论”和“社会距离理论”, 它们的理论基础各异, 关注的现象却存在交集。最后, 未来的权力研究可以从以下3个方向改进：(1)关注文化、动机、自我卷入等因素; (2)区别社会权力和个人权力; (3)融合各领域观点; (4)丰富研究方法, 以促进理论的发展。     

Individual response profiles in the behavioral assessment of personality

A long-standing problem in the behavioural assessment of personality is the individual specificity of responses. Often, different persons externalize the same trait in different responses. One solution to this problem is to aggregate many different responses. The paper compares the power of response aggregation for predicting self-and other-ratings of personality with two alternative strategies of response selection: the nomothetic strategy of selecting the response with the highest overall predictive power, and the more idiographic strategy of selecting, for each individual, the most extreme response. Seventy subjects were videotaped in a sequence of social situations inducing shyness to various degrees. Five different nonverbal measures of shyness all correlated significantly with the subjects' self- or other-rated shyness, and showed low correlations across subjects and a substantial cross-situational consistency of response profiles. Response aggregation and both strategies of response selection were found to be equally powerful in predicting the subjects' self- and other-ratings of shyness from the five behavioural responses. Therefore, these findings somewhat dampen the hope often expressed in recent theoretical discussions of personality assessment that more respect for the individual case may improve nomothetic assessment procedures.