Power is everywhere: parents allowing children to play, the policeman issuing a ticket, a doctor giving advice, a teacher marking essays, a manager calling a meeting, a governor passing a bill, or an officer refusing an immigrant’s visa.

Having (or lacking) power meaningfully impacts how people feel, think, and act.


Traditionally, and more frequently, power has been conceptualized in social influence and control terms. In the dominant conception one is said to have power if he or she has the “potential to influence others in psychologically meaningful ways” through the giving and withholding of rewards and / or punishments.


In its strongest form, power confers the ability to control completely outcomes that are valued by others.


Power matters. Power is coveted, fought over, and admired yet feared by those who are subjected to it. Why is power so important? The fundamental nature and import of power derives from power’s ability to satisfy core self- and group-serving needs. Individuals have a basic need to control their own outcomes and be effective in their relationship with the environment in attempts to secure basic resources and valued outcomes. At the individual level, having power facilitates, whereas lacking power decrease the ability to secure desired resources and outcomes.


Power is also important because it is the glue that coordinates social life and move shared goals forward. Therefore, most power positions consist of legitimized institutional roles. Schools, industry, justice systems, governments, and the police are examples of cocreated social organizations with power asymmetries that are generally consented.


How does power affect action? Power disinhibit behavior, such that powerful people act more. People with high (vs. low) power behave more variably, talk and interrupt more, and speak out of turn more often.


Finally, with respect to constraints upon power, they reveal how group-based representations (a fellow group member’s reputation), communication (gossip), and self-assessments (an individual’s modest sense of power) constrain the actions of those in power according to how they advance group interests.


Are system justification tendencies primarily the result of attempts by the powerful at maintaining their privilege, or are they the result of motivations common to both low- and high-status group members? Kay suggested that individuals of low status justify the system as much as those of high status.


Philosophers at least as far back as Plato began to grapple with what we mean by “power,” and their work has continued energetically to this day. Despite all this energy, though, every discipline has failed to agree upon a unified definition of power.


Social power is an explicitly relational construct. One person cannot have power without others to be subordinated.


In Weber’s view, power is “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.” This definition has become quite dominant in sociology which emphasize the individual’s capacity to exert will regardless of others’ resistance.


There are 2 forms of power, fate control (control over the outcomes of another person) and behavior control (control over another person’s actions).


In addition, psychology has tended to study the extreme case of completely asymmetrical power, in which the powerless party is dependent upon the powerful, but the powerful is independent.


Observers tend to be biased toward seeing power holders as unconstrained and disproportionally motivated. Individuals placed in positions of power may tend to see themselves as highly constrained, whether by others’ expectations or by their own shortcomings.


Most junior faculty see tenure as a desired resource. Tenure is valued — and thus confers a power advantage on those who can grant or withhold it — but only by those junior faculty whose identities are strongly invested in their careers.


Power might be seen as the ability to set the agenda and determine what issues will be recognized as candidates for discussion or influence, when there is open conflict among interests. On the other hand, Lukes argues that power is the ability to control what is perceived as an interest or a good at such a covert level that other parties are not even aware that interests are being contested.


In the popular imagination, the powerful are viewed with distrust. It is believed that “power corrupts,” that power goes to one’s head, that the powerful are willing to hurt others to get what they want. Ng showed that individuals described as “power seeking” are seen more negatively even than those described as “cold.” Power is a dirty word in our culture’s lexicon. People feel deeply ambivalent about even acknowledging that power plays a role in organizational decision making, because to do so contravenes our myths that decisions are determined by individual merit and objectively “correct” alternatives.


Power can also be seen as a universal, necessary, and even inevitable force. Without power, no collection of people would be able to accomplish any end.


Russell contrasted the seeker of power as an end with one who uses power as a means only: “The man who desires power as a means has first some other desire, and is then led to wish that he were in a position to achieve it.”


What is required by the dominance view is that the power holder act for self- or group-enrichment, at the expense of others, with power for its own sake as the ultimate goal. From Jesus Christ to Tolkien’s Galadriel, power is seen as a temptation that must ultimately corrupt even the best intentions of its holder, if it is sought for its own sake.


It should be noted that all of the perspectives reviewed to this point focus on culturally Western conceptions of power. Missing are Eastern views, which appear to differ in a number of significant ways. East Asian concepts of power comport with the functionalist perspective, in that power is seen to carry responsibility rather than privilege. The Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist traditions, for example, discuss control over self and impulses, a subordination of personal interests to the good of others, an orientation toward one’s group, and a duty to hierarchical relationships. These beliefs can be manifested in actions, such as some Japanese CEOs’ taking such extreme personal responsibility for their companies’ failures that they commit suicide.


Societies tend toward greater inequality; that is, as any society arises, there also arise identifiable economic, religious, and political elites. These elites’ interests may converge or compete, but as their members interact, an established order forms and constitutes a power structure that enjoys disproportionate privilege and share of resources.


Powerlessness tends to foster responses that the powerful see as maladaptive and that, indeed, tend to work against their ability to further their own interests, such as competition with fellow proletariat and even slovenliness, self-directed harm, and neglect.


Once an initial power structure has arisen, that structure must maintain its legitimacy in order to persist. Often, however, elites use oppression and coercion to impose their will, and this unjust exercise of power elicits resistance — sometimes, ultimately, revolution — from the oppressed.


Political systems tend to follow a predictable pattern of revolution; consolidation of power by the victors marked by overt, physical enforcement; subsequent movement toward legitimacy as a means of avoiding the need for constant physical enforcement and of ensuring stable, consensual order; and finally, as opposing interests gained strength, revolution again.

Much attention has been paid to the ways distributive systems are created and maintained; who gains resources and privileges; and what obligations are exacted from them in return. Those who control means of production, land and resources, and channels of persuasion are seen as most likely to enjoy privilege and power.


As for system maintenance, several theorists have noted that the more subtle the exercise of power, the more potentially effective it is. Lukes argued that power operates most strongly — and covertly — through the manipulation of the masses’ view of their own interests, such that they advocate for the interests of the elite without ever even realizing that their own interests are compromised by the result. In another vein, it has often been argued that social approval and censure work more effectively than laws and formal enforcement in effecting behavioral control.


High status among baboons is determined in part by accurate social perceptions; high-status baboons are good at distinguishing real from perceived threats (social and otherwise) — unlike low-status baboons, who fail to differentiate between the two, thus wasting energy and worsening their own stress. High-status baboons also benefit from lower levels of stress hormones overall than those at lower levels of the hierarchy. This especially the case following conflict situations: High-status baboons enjoy a rewarding rush of testosterone, whereas the vanquished, low-status baboon suffer a flood of cortisol instead.