Lectures Power and Leadership 2021/2022
Power and Leadership - Lecture Notes
Lecture 1: Power - The basics
What is power?
- Asymmetric control (some have more than others) over valuable resources in social
relations
- It varies from situation to situations; relationship to relationship and over time → always
fluctuates; shifting power dynamics
- Structural differences translates directly into psychological experience → sense of
power/control
- Power is related to, but different from status, influence and leadership → status is
afforded to you (given to you, by respecting/admiring you), influence has no outcome
control, but power gives outcome control; leadership’s goal is to benefit the group, power
can also be corrupt/selfish
What signals power and helps you get power?
- Power can be signaled by position in the room (e.g. head vs middle of the table, round
vs square table) → how you position yourself in a room gives others impression of power
and makes yourself feel more powerful
- Emotional intelligence and personality helps to get and maintain power
- Social class helps to get power; if you're from a lower class it is harder to acquire power
and you might not be willing to pursue it
- Physical attributes (e.g. being tall); facial structure (more dominant, strict lines, no baby
face), gender (being male helps), attractiveness (works for men, hurts women)
- Body position → high power body language (more relaxed, open, bigger) vs low power
language (smaller, closed)
Power dynamics play out in a larger context (Anderson & Brion, 2014)
- Antecedents (what gives you power)
- Individual differences: personality, motives and needs, perceived competence,
physical characteristics, demographics, verbal and non-verval behavior
- Contextual factors: structural position, status
- Power maintenance
- Exogenous: system justification, attributions
- Endogenous: power’s effects on affect, cognitions, behavior
- Power loss (not much research on this)
- Exogenous: environmental competition, intragroup characteristics, individual
characteristics
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,Lectures Power and Leadership 2021/2022
- Endogenous : ethical transgression, decision-making biases, biased
interpersonal perception
- Moderators: personal characteristics (drive for power, disposition factors), responses to
threat (stability, legitimacy, status)
→ Paper is a very good review, but some criticism on the main messages
What does power (or lack thereof) do to people?
- Power-approach theory: Power has wide ranging psychological and behavioral
consequences by fundamentally altering the way individuals perceive the world,
themselves and others
- Elevated power activates approach related processes
- Approach tendency
- Positive affect
- Attention to rewards
- Disinhibited behavior
- Actions guided by internal preferences/factors (i.e. goals, states, traits, beliefs,
cultural values, emotions, etc) rather than normative constraints
- Diminished power activates avoidance processes
- Avoidance tendency
- Negative affect
- Attention to threats
- Inhibited behavior
- Actions guided by external factors and situational constraints
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, Lectures Power and Leadership 2021/2022
Broad effects of power that are likely to affect one’s chances to maintain/lose power
- Power reveals and liberates the person: with power a person’s true nature emerges
- Power “makes” the person: power influences action, goal-pursuits, illusions of control,
overconfidence, optimism, risk-taking and decisiveness
- Power shifts attentional focus on the self: power affects the type and extent of attention
paid to the self, context and others
Power liberates you to be more like yourself or your culture
- Power increases the association between individual characteristics and behavior (true
self is free to express itself)
- With power, the communally oriented become more generous and the exchange
oriented become more selfish
- When primed with power, men flirt more openly with women, but only those with
a predisposition towards sexual harassment
- With power, Machiavellianians are more abusive towards their subordinates
- With power, high perspective-takers are more procedurally fair towards their
subordinates
- Power increases the association between cultural values and behavior
- In the west self is conceptualized as independent whereas in the east it is
interdependent
- In the west, power tends to be associated with rewards, whereas in the eastern
cultures, power tends to be associated with responsibility
Power and assertive action: High power take more action
- Disinhibited and entitled behavior: more powerful more likely to offering help in
ambiguous situation
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