Striving for personal power as a basis for social power dynamics

Dijke, Marius van; Poppe, Matthijs

doi:10.1002/ejsp.351

Cited by 103 publications

(104 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Power enhances personal control and resources , Van Dijke & Poppe 2006, which motivates some people to seek power and to avoid relinquishing it once they have gained it (Ratcliff & Vescio 2013). Together, this work shows that maintaining power is important for power holders, who monitor their relative power and respond to threats with harsh power assertion.…”

Section: Exercising and Maintaining Powermentioning

confidence: 78%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How Power Affects People: Activating, Wanting, and Goal Seeking

Guinote

2017

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

290

274

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sociocognitive research has demonstrated that power affects how people feel, think, and act. In this article, I review literature from social psychology, neuroscience, management, and animal research and propose an integrated framework of power as an intensifier of goal-related approach motivation. A growing literature shows that power energizes thought, speech, and action and orients individuals toward salient goals linked to power roles, predispositions, tasks, and opportunities. Power magnifies self-expression linked to active parts of the self (the active self ), enhancing confidence, self-regulation, and prioritization of efforts toward advancing focal goals. The effects of power on cognitive processes, goal preferences, performance, and corruption are discussed, and its potentially detrimental effects on social attention, perspective taking, and objectification of subordinates are examined. Several inconsistencies in the literature are explained by viewing power holders as more flexible and dynamic than is usually assumed.

show abstract

Section: Exercising and Maintaining Powermentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Van Dijke & Poppe (2006) and Lammers et al (2016) found that people seek power mainly to increase control over their own lives. This increased sense of control plays a causal role in power holders' optimism and action orientation ).…”

Section: Power and Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Power Affects People: Activating, Wanting, and Goal Seeking

Guinote

2017

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

290

274

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Interestingly, the finding that follower control perceptions did not explain endorsement of prototypical leaders points to a drawback of prototypical leadership: Perceiving more control in leaders' decisions suggests that such leaders are, in fact, viewed as having less "hard" power over their followers (van Dijke & Poppe, 2006). Because low identifiers care relatively little about the group and its leader but do perceive prototypical leaders as having less power, prototypical leaders may not have an easy job influencing weakly identified followers.…”

Section: Implications For Leadership Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Procedural fairness and endorsement of prototypical leaders: Leader benevolence or follower control?

Dijke

Cremer

2010

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research explored why strongly identifying followers endorse prototypical leaders by addressing the role of procedural fairness in this process. We introduced the distinction between procedural fairness rules relating to leader benevolence (i.e. whether the leader supports the group's interests) and follower control (i.e., whether followers can influence the leader's decisions). We predicted that strongly identifying group members endorse prototypical leaders because they perceive such leaders as acting in line with benevolence related fairness rules rather than because such leaders are perceived as giving followerscontrol. An organizational field study and a laboratory experiment revealed support for these ideas. Our results thus provide insights into why prototypical leaders are endorsed among strongly identifying followers. They also have implications for the procedural fairness literature in showing that frequently studied procedural fairness rules (e.g. voice) do not explain endorsement of leaders believed to support the group's interests. Keywords:Leadership, prototypicality, identification, procedural fairness, justice, legitimacy. ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Prototypicality and Fairness 3 Procedural Fairness and Endorsement of Prototypical Leaders: Leader Benevolence orFollower Control?An important precondition for effective leadership is that followers support their leaders and voluntarily comply with their decisions (Yukl, 2006). Research consistently shows that followers are more willing to accept decisions and to support their leaders when they perceive that these leaders enact decision making procedures fairly (see Colquitt, Greenberg, & Zapata-Phelan, 2005, for an overview). Findings like these have increased recognition of the relevance of procedural fairness for leadership research (De Cremer & Tyler, in press).The present study explores the role of procedural fairness in the social identity analysis of leadership. This analysis notes that leaders who represent important and salient group characteristics -prototypical leaders-are endorsed more, particularly among followers displaying strong group identification (see , for overviews).We aim to clarify why prototypical leaders are endorsed by addressing the mediating role of procedural fairness in this process. We argue that strongly identifying followers perceive prototypical leaders as acting in line with a number of procedural fairness rules. More specifically, we distinguish procedural fairness rules (cf. Leventhal, 1980) referring to follower control (i.e., whether followers can influence their leader's decisions) from rules referring to leader benevolence (i.e., whether the leader takes care of the group's interests).We will argue that endorsement of prototypical leaders (as it occurs among high identifiers) is based on perceptions of leader benevolence, rather than on perceptions of follower control (see Figure 1, for a graphic depiction of our predictions). This distinction arguably has important consequences for our understanding of t...

show abstract

“…In general, power is linked to broad strivings for agency (van Dijke & Poppe, 2006;Overbeck & Park, 2001). Smith, Jostmann, Galinksy, and van Dijk (2008) showed that low power impaired performance on some executive function measures, notably the Stroop task.…”

Section: Power Promotes Self-regulation Of Effortmentioning

confidence: 99%

How leaders self-regulate their task performance: Evidence that power promotes diligence, depletion, and disdain.

DeWall

Baumeister

Mead

et al. 2011

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

146

128

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When leaders perform solitary tasks, do they self-regulate to maximize their effort, or do they reduce effort and conserve their resources? Our model suggests that power motivates selfregulation toward effective performance -unless the task is perceived as unworthy of leaders.Our first studies showed that power improves self-regulation and performance, even when resources for self-regulation are low (ego depletion). Additional studies showed that leaders sometimes disdain tasks they deem unworthy, by withholding effort (and therefore performing poorly). Ironically, during ego depletion leaders skip the appraisal and therefore work hard regardless of task suitability, so that depleted leaders sometimes outperform non-depleted ones.Our final studies replicated these patterns with different tasks and even simply manipulating framing and perception of the same task (Experiment 5). Experiment 4 also showed that the continued high exertion of leaders when depleted takes a heavy toll, resulting in larger impairments later. The judicious expenditure of self-control resources among powerful people may help them prioritize their efforts to pursue their goals effectively.3 How Leaders Self-Regulate Their Task Performance: Evidence that Power Promotes Diligence, Depletion, and DisdainIn most work groups, leaders direct their subordinates to set aside their own individual goals and motives in order to work toward the common good (van Vugt, 2006;van Vugt, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2008). Task leadership is thus essentially interpersonal. Yet leaders often must perform many tasks themselves, including solitary and even mundane chores. Some of these stem from the leadership role directly, whereas others may come in the course of ordinary life and bear no relation to the leadership role. Faced with demands for such performance, leaders may choose to exert themselves to high levels, or they may slack off or even refuse to perform.The decision is often consequential, insofar as the leader's psychological resources of time, energy, and attention are limited and precious. The present research tested two hypotheses about how leaders would respond to such task demands and regulate their solitary performances.Our first hypothesis was that assignment to a position of power or leadership would generally motivate the person to self-regulate effort so as to perform well. Simply occupying a leadership role would thus motivate people to exert energy at many tasks. Self-regulatory efforts would mostly lead to improvements in performance, even on solitary tasks with little apparent connection to the leader's exertion of power. However, this willingness to work hard would be tempered with a broad sense of awareness of limited resources. Hence our second hypothesis predicted that leaders would show reluctance to exert themselves on tasks that they deem as inappropriate uses of their time and effort. We adopted the term disdain to refer to a leader's withdrawal of effort from performance of a task deemed unworthy of a leader's exertions and to the...

show abstract

Striving for personal power as a basis for social power dynamics

Cited by 103 publications

References 46 publications

How Power Affects People: Activating, Wanting, and Goal Seeking

How Power Affects People: Activating, Wanting, and Goal Seeking

Procedural fairness and endorsement of prototypical leaders: Leader benevolence or follower control?

How leaders self-regulate their task performance: Evidence that power promotes diligence, depletion, and disdain.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About