Vertical relationships II

Question 1

What is social status?

Answer 1

According to social and organisational psychological theory, people care deeply about their own social worth or social reputation

Respect & Admiration
the extent to which an individual or group is respected or admired by others

Deference
status equals the amount of voluntary deference one receives

Question 2

Who gains social status?

Answer 2

High social status is given to those individuals who have competencies that are valuable to the group and are willing to advance group goals:
- Committed group members
- Self-less and generous group members
- Extraversion
- Dominance
- Competence displaying

Question 3

Who gains social status: Willer (2009) study
Participants, Design, Procedure, Key outcome measure

Answer 3

Participants
71 undergraduate students

Design
Participants were either paired with high ($.95) or low ($.05) contributing player- helps them manipulate whether pp’s believed they interacted

Procedure
- 6-person Public Goods game with initial endowment of $5, in which player decides how much of $1 they contribute to public good
- Any contribution to public good is doubled and equally divided between all players. If all players contribute, they can double their endowment, but any free-rider can benefit without taking the risk of loosing their contribution.

everyone invests in public group which is multiplied and divided by members

Key Outcome Measure
Rate status: honourable, prestigious, respected

Question 4

Who gains social status: Willer (2009) study
RESULTS

Answer 4

Participants paired with a high contributing partner assigned higher status to their partner, who was thought to be more motivated to help the group

Those who were said to contribute more, were perceived to have greater motivation to be part of this group → receiving greater status

Question 5

What does high social status lead to?
- main benefit
- related benefits

Answer 5

Greater other-orientation and pro-sociality
- Perspective Taking
- Generosity
- Pursue collective interest

Question 6

High Status’ Other-Orientation: Blader (2016)
Participants, status manipulation, procedure

Answer 6

Participants
396 working adults from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Status manipulation
- Recall of high / low status episode
- Recall of high / low power episode

Procedure
Spatial perspective-taking task- what side of the table is the ash tray (if saying on my perspective on the right and on their perspective on the left)

Question 7

High Status’ Other-Orientation: Blader (2016)
RESULTS

Answer 7

High status participants showed increased levels of perspective taking, but high power participants showed reduced levels of perspective taking

Question 8

What is leadership?

Answer 8

Process of influencing others in a manner that enhances their contribution to the realisation of group goals (Hollander, 1959)

(Power and status come earlier
Leadership is the consequence influencing other members - influence= contributing to other goals)

Question 9

Power without status: Anicich et al. (2016)
Participants and measures

Answer 9

Participants
86 working adults

Measures
- Status (e.g., “To what extent does your position at work give you high status in the eyes of others?”)
- Power (authority to hire and fire people in their organisations)
- Interpersonal Conflict (e.g., “I often have personal disagreements with others at my place of work”)

Question 10

Power without status: Anicich et al. (2016)
RESULTS

Answer 10

Individuals with high power but with low status reported greater relationship conflict at work

When high power meets low status, relationship is quite low

Question 11

Power with perspective-taking: Galinsky et al. (2014)
Participants, Social Power manipulation, procedure

Answer 11

Participants
256 undergraduates assigned to dyads

Social Power manipulation
Assigned to either boss or employee role

Procedure
- Perspective-taking exercise or control
- Modified version of the hidden-profile
‘‘murder-mystery’’ decision task:
Participants received a packet containing a series of interviews from a fictional homicide investigation, a list of suspects, and a map. They had 15 min to read their packet and take notes for a meeting with their partner. The materials contained 23 clues that were incriminating or exonerating for each of 3 male suspects (E, B, and M). One partner was randomly assigned to receive more unique clues (8) than the other (2), thus the pair that was able to share these unique clues would be more likely to solve the case.

Only if they work together as a team and exchange info they have individually received they can solve the murder mystery- this is the principle here. So we want to know can these teams do the task by working together efficiently.

Question 12

Power with perspective-taking: Galinsky et al. (2014)
RESULTS

Answer 12

baseline= no training
perspective taking= they had received training and seeing the world through the eyes of other people

Main result: Perspective-Taking training for high power participants (boss) yielded the greatest improvement for dyadic outcome

• If the boss received perspective-taking training, the team did better in solving the murder mystery overall
• Perspective taking also helps if the training was received by the person who does not hold power
• You’re almost twice as likely to solve the murder mystery if the boss received perspective taking training
• So if we can bestow psychological tendencies of high status within our power holders, we benefit so much more from.

Question 13

Video showing what paternalistic leadership looks like

Answer 13

Japanese leader talks to employees, takes the bus to work, he eats in the cafeteria

Paternalistic leaders show special responsibility for their team members and even their off-the-job lives

Question 14

What is paternalistic leadership?
definition + components

Answer 14

a leadership style that combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence
(Farh & Cheng, 2000, p.91)

(these leaders are ones which will have a drink with their employees after work, they will take personal interest in workers lives eg. families)

• managers take a personal interest in workers’ off-the-job lives and attempt to promote workers’ personal welfare
• people in authority consider it an obligation to provide protection to those under their care and in exchange expect loyalty and deference
• prevalent and effective in many business cultures, such as in the Middle East, Pacific Asia, and Latin America

Question 15

Powerholders’ responsibility: Maddux (2006)
Scenario, Participants, Outcome measures

Answer 15

Scenario
You are the president of a large company. Your company is having major financial difficulties and you decide you must lay off 15% of your employees in order to try to make the company profitable again. You meet with all the high-level managers to decide which employees are the least essential to the company and you decide to fire these nonessential employees. In addition, you decide to cut all salaries,
including your own, by 15%. You hope that these measures will make the company profitable again.

Participants
87 American and 70 Japanese undergraduate students

Outcome Measures
- the extent to which participants felt responsible for:
(a) cutting their own salary
(b) the employees who received pay cuts
(c) the employees they fired
(d) the families of the fired employees
(e) a year later there was an increase in crime in the area.

Question 16

Powerholders’ responsibility: Maddux (2006)
RESULTS

Answer 16

Overall Japanese participants felt more responsibility for others across a wider range of targets

For each measure:
(a) Americans experiences greater responsibility for self
(b) Not much difference for pay cuts
(c) More responsibility amongst Japanese for firings
(d) More responsibility for Japanese for families
(e) More responsibility for Japanese for crime

Question 17

Powerholders’ responsibility illustrated in a newspaper article

Answer 17

“On Wednesday, a Japanese chief executive made a laudable move that would be stunning to many American employees if their CEO did the same. Tadashi Ishii, the chief executive of Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising agency, said he would resign in January to take responsibility for alleged violations of Japanese labor law following the suicide of a young employee late last year. The suicide was ruled by officials as “karoshi,” a Japanese term for “death from over work”. Ishii’s resignation fits with the remarkably common pattern of Japanese CEOs stepping down after a shameful or scandalous incident at the firms they lead. Earlier this year, 7-Eleven mogul Toshifumi Suzuki, 83, resigned after losing a boardroom fight with activist investor Dan Loeb, saying at a news conference that “I am unbearably ashamed.” Last year, Toshiba CEO Hisao Tanaka resigned after an investigation found that he and other executives were
responsible for a $1.2 billion accounting scandal. “I deeply apologize to all stakeholders for causing these problems,” he said at a news conference, noting “this has resulted in the largest damage ever to our corporate image.” The list of resigning Japanese CEOs taking the fall for their corporations goes on, including at Olympus and Tepco.” December 2016, Washington Post

here you see paternalistic leadership in action:
- They not only care about families but also assume responsibility for actions and assume responsibility when things go wrong
- Japanese often tend to stay in the office for a long time, overworking

Question 18

What does power without status and power with status show?

Answer 18

Whilst power without status is detrimental to group outcomes, power in combination with status seems to provide the opportunity to take a team forward