Power is in a constant state of flux. A graduate student TA explaining concepts they consider simple and giving instructions or deadlines to undergraduate students may feel like the most powerful person around. However, when that same graduate students stands in front of a grant review board and attempts to defend their research and keep their funding, they may feel like the most powerless person in the world.
“Power is situationally defined and can be primed very quickly,” Asst. Public Policy Prof. Eileen Chou said in an email. “It can be primed through the relative amount of resources they control, the roles they hold, and the titles that they have.”
Group identity is one of the biggest deciding factors in how powerful a person feels. Both the groups with which they identify and how they identify within the groups come into play.
“Whereas power is a self-perception that is situationally based, status is other-conferred — therefore, it is possible for someone to be in a high power position yet with unmatched status,” Chou said in an email. “A mismatch can negatively affect interpersonal behavior.”
According to a 2012 study published in the “Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,” feelings of power that aren’t accompanied by equivalent levels of status or control, can make people feel isolated, unappreciated and disrespected. This can lead to aggressive or demeaning behaviors, from telling another to say something demeaning about themselves to behavior as extreme as the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, the paper says.
There is also a research to suggest that power can increase personal inclinations and self-serving behaviors. These types of behaviors don’t necessarily harm others, they may in fact help them, but they hurt or help based solely on what will benefit the individual.
In 2010, “Psychological Science” published a paper on power and morality, which used a definition of power more akin to “control.” It found that people tend to judge others more harshly based how powerful they feel, or how entitled they are to judge, and judge themselves less harshly.
On the other hand, people with low levels of power tended to be more critical of themselves and more allowing of people in power.
“When it comes to social hierarchies, researchers at the Stanford University have demonstrated that people respond to another’s power moves with complementary responses,” Chou said in an email. “More specifically, people have a tendency to respond to dominant behaviors with submissive and vice versa.”
However, the 2010 study found one exception — when it was revealed that a position of power had been achieved by illegitimate means, people stopped making allowances and started openly criticising.
Sometimes, group membership — the very thing that causes people to allow or justify mistakes — can also make them feel that it’s okay for them to criticise another individual. When the powerful are knocked down a peg or two, people may suddenly find that certain individuals are now at the same social level as them, and therefore justified targets on which they can pass judgement.
However, this criticism can also mean that they are painting the offending individual as a complex person. People are more likely to see members of groups to which they belong as human beings with strengths and weakness, and see outsiders as one-dimensional.
“We struggle to recognize that we may not give the same consideration or benefit of the doubt to members of other groups,” graduate psychology student Jordan Axt said in an email. “In addition, we often fall into the trap that while members of our ingroup are unique and diverse, members of other groups are all the same.”
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