This might not always work, but to the extent that it does it represents a type of legitimate power—power that comes from a belief in the appropriateness or obligation to respond to the requests of others with legitimate standing.
People with referent power have an ability to influence others because they can lead those others to identify with them. A young child who mimics the opinions or behaviors of an older sibling or a famous sportsperson, or a religious person who follows the advice of a respected religious leader, is influenced by referent power.
Referent power generally produces private acceptance rather than public compliance Kelman, The influence brought on by referent power may occur in a passive sense because the person being emulated does not necessarily attempt to influence others, and the person who is being influenced may not even realize that the influence is occurring.
In other cases, however, the person with referent power such as the leader of a cult may make full use of his or her status as the target of identification or respect to produce change. In either case, referent power is a particularly strong source of influence because it is likely to result in the acceptance of the opinions of the important other.
Experts have knowledge or information, and conforming to those whom we perceive to be experts is useful for making decisions about issues for which we have insufficient expertise. Expert power thus represents a type of informational influence based on the fundamental desire to obtain valid and accurate information, and where the outcome is likely to be private acceptance. Conformity to the beliefs or instructions of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and computer experts is an example of expert influence; we assume that these individuals have valid information about their areas of expertise, and we accept their opinions based on this perceived expertise particularly if their advice seems to be successful in solving problems.
Expert power is increased for those who possess more information about a relevant topic than others do because the others must turn to this individual to gain the information.
You can see, then, that if you want to influence others, it can be useful to gain as much information about the topic as you can.
Having power provides some benefits for those who have it. Despite these advantages of having power, a little power goes a long way and having too much can be dangerous, for both the targets of the power and the power-holder himself or herself.
According to random assignment to experimental conditions, one half of the supervisors were able to influence the workers through legitimate power only, by sending them messages attempting to persuade them to work harder.
The other half of the supervisors were given increased power. In addition to being able to persuade the workers to increase their output through the messages, they were also given both reward power the ability to give small monetary rewards and coercive power the ability to take away earlier rewards.
Although the workers who were actually preprogrammed performed equally well in both conditions, the participants who were given more power took advantage of it by more frequently contacting the workers and more frequently threatening them. The students in this condition relied almost exclusively on coercive power rather than attempting to use their legitimate power to develop positive relations with the subordinates.
At the end of the study, the supervisors who had been given extra power rated the workers more negatively, were less interested in meeting them, and felt that the only reason the workers did well was to obtain the rewards.
The conclusion of these researchers is clear: having power may lead people to use it, even though it may not be necessary, which may then lead them to believe that their subordinates are performing only because of the threats.
Although using excess power may be successful in the short run, power that is based exclusively on reward and coercion is not likely to produce a positive environment for either the power-holder or the subordinate. Although this research suggests that people may use power when it is available to them, other research has found that this is not equally true for all people—still another case of a person-situation interaction.
One type of person who has power over others, in the sense that the person is able to influence them, is leaders. Leaders are in a position in which they can exert leadership , which is the ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals Chemers, ; Hogg, Leaders have many different influence techniques at their disposal: In some cases they may give commands and enforce them with reward or coercive power, resulting in public compliance with the commands.
In other cases they may rely on well-reasoned technical arguments or inspirational appeals, making use of legitimate, referent, or expert power, with the goal of creating private acceptance and leading their followers to achieve. Leadership is a classic example of the combined effects of the person and the social situation. One approach to understanding leadership is to focus on person variables. One personality variable that is associated with effective leadership is intelligence.
Being intelligent improves leadership, as long as the leader is able to communicate in a way that is easily understood by his or her followers Simonton, , Leaders who have expertise in the area of their leadership will be more effective than those who do not.
Because so many characteristics seem to be related to leadership skills, some researchers have attempted to account for leadership not in terms of individual traits but in terms of a package of traits that successful leaders seem to have. Charismatic leaders are leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group.
Charismatic leaders express views that support and validate existing group norms but that also contain a vision of what the group could or should be. Charismatic leaders use their referent power to motivate, uplift, and inspire others. Transactional leaders are the more regular leaders who work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them and to get the job done.
Transformational leaders , on the other hand, are more like charismatic leaders—they have a vision of where the group is going and attempt to stimulate and inspire their workers to move beyond their present status and to create a new and better future. Even though there appears to be at least some personality traits that relate to leadership ability, the most important approaches to understanding leadership take into consideration both the personality characteristics of the leader and the situation in which the leader is operating.
In some cases, the situation itself is important. However, against the backdrop of the threat posed by Nazi Germany, his defiant and stubborn nature provided just the inspiration many sought.
In other cases, however, both the situation and the person are critical. The contingency model of leadership effectiveness is a model of leadership effectiveness that focuses on both person variables and situational variables.
Fielder conceptualized the leadership style of the individual as a relatively stable personality variable and measured it by having people consider all the people they had ever worked with and describe the person that they least liked to work with their least preferred coworker. Those who indicated that they only somewhat disliked their least preferred coworker were classified as relationship-oriented types of people, who were motivated to have close personal relationships with others.
However, those who indicated that they did not like this coworker very much were classified as task-oriented types, who were motivated primarily by getting the job done. Specifically, as shown in Figure 6. Furthermore, Fielder believed that these factors were ordered in terms of their importance, with leader-member relationships being more important than task structure, which was in turn more important than position power.
The most favorable relationship involves good relationships, a structured task, and strong power for the leader, whereas the least favorable relationship involves poor relationships, an unstructured task, and weak leader power.
The contingency model is interactionist because it proposes that individuals with different leadership styles will differ in effectiveness in different group situations. Task-oriented leaders are expected to be most effective in situations in which the group situation is very favorable because this gives the leader the ability to move the group forward, or in situations in which the group situation is very unfavorable and in which the extreme problems of the situation require the leader to engage in decisive action.
However, in the situations of moderate favorableness, which occur when there is a lack of support for the leader or when the problem to be solved is very difficult or unclear, the more relationship-oriented leader is expected to be more effective. Still another approach to understanding leadership is based on the extent to which a group member embodies the norms of the group. Anderson, C. The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83 , — Power, optimism, and risk-taking. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36 , — Avolio, B. Transformational and charismatic leadership: The road ahead. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Press. Ayman, R. The contingency model of leadership effectiveness: Its level of analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 6 2 , — Personality predicts obedience in a Milgram paradigm. Journal of Personality. Accepted, not yet published. Beyer, J. Taming and promoting charisma to change organizations.
Leadership Quarterly, 10 2 , — Blass, T. Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment: The role of personality, situations, and their interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60 3 , The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29 , — Burger, J. Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64 1 , Chemers, M.
Leadership effectiveness: An integrative review. Commissioner Rob Manfred soon issued a nine-page report that found that most of the Astros players knew of the scheme and many participated in it. The report said that manager Hinch knew of the scheme and that GM Luhnow should have prevented it. There was other fall-out, too. Beltran, who had just been hired as manager of the New York Mets, was fired. Cora, who had subsequently become the manager of the Boston Red Sox, was also fired.
In late April , Manfred found that the Red Sox had done some illicit sign-stealing in the season. Surprisingly, though, he concluded that manager Cora and most of the Red Sox players did not know about it. Manfred imposed a modest punishment on the Red Sox organization in the form of a lost draft pick.
But again, none of the players who participated in the scheme were penalized. He claimed that granting immunity in exchange for information was the best way to quickly discover the truth. This approach was praised by some, [14] but other observers were unconvinced. Additionally, MLB had stated in its warning about sign-stealing that it would hold management responsible for violations.
The game got a black eye from the PED scandal, which is brought back into the spotlight every year as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and others are refused entry to the baseball Hall of Fame by sportswriters who insist on punishing their cheating in ways that MLB never did.
And Astros players such as Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, and Justin Verlander will probably have a better chance to enter the Hall of Fame than if they had been suspended for cheating. The damage done by the Astros is significant. The impact on the Astros and its players, beyond a new manager and general manager, is as yet unknown. The Astros worry that opposing pitchers will feel some degree of freedom to throw at Astros hitters. A former major league pitcher, Mike Bolsinger, sued the Astros.
This video introduces the behavioral ethics bias known as obedience to authority. We all need to monitor ourselves to ensure that we are not unduly suspending our own independent ethical judgment in order to please our superiors. If students are not aware of this vulnerability, they cannot guard against it. Many white-collar criminals trace their downfall to an excessive obedience to authority.
Psychologist Stanley Milgram studied whether Americans might be as obedient to authority as Germans seemed to be under Hitler. The question addressed was whether subjects would deliver apparently painful electric shocks to another person who had missed a question in an apparent test of whether negative reinforcement through electric shocks would improve memory, just because someone in a white lab coat told them to do so.
Although people predicted before the experiment that very few American subjects would show excessive obedience to authority, in actuality, as Professor Francesca Gino writes:. Over 60 percent of participants delivered the maximum shock. Perhaps this should not have been too surprising. The pleasure centers of our brains light up when we please authority. Law and order are generally good things, so some level of obedience to authority is definitely a good thing. But if people go too far and suspect their own independent ethical judgment, either consciously or unconsciously, they are dropping the ball.
Employers, we argue, pay employees for their brains, their education and training, and their judgment. Employers are short-changed if employees do not use their best strategic judgment, their best operational judgment, and their best moral judgment, because errors in any of the three areas can be quite costly.
To learn about related behavioral ethics concepts, watch Conformity Bias and Role Morality. Terms defined in our ethics glossary that are related to the video and case studies include: conformity bias, obedience to authority, and role morality. Behavioral ethics draws upon behavioral psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and related disciplines to determine how and why people make the ethical and unethical decisions that they do.
Much behavioral ethics research addresses the question of why good people do bad things. Anyone who watches all or even a good part of these videos will have a solid introduction to behavioral ethics. Ariely, Dan. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Bazerman, Max H. De Cremer, David Editor. De Cremer, David, and Ann E. Tenbrunsel Editors. New York: Routledge. Summary Obedience and Authority. Factors That Increase Obedience Milgram found that subjects were more likely to obey in some circumstances than others.
Obedience was highest when: Commands were given by an authority figure rather than another volunteer The experiments were done at a prestigious institution The authority figure was present in the room with the subject The learner was in another room The subject did not see other subjects disobeying commands In everyday situations, people obey orders because they want to get rewards, because they want to avoid the negative consequences of disobeying, and because they believe an authority is legitimate.
Researchers think several factors cause people to carry obedience to extremes: People justify their behavior by assigning responsibility to the authority rather than themselves. People obey easy commands first and then feel compelled to obey more and more difficult commands.
This process is called entrapment, and it illustrates the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Previous section Attraction Next section Groups. Published May 25, Milgram S. Obedience to Authority: an Experimental View. Published June 8, Pastorino E, Doyle-Portillo S. What Is Psychology? Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning; Weiten W.
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Table of Contents. Obedience vs. Obedience in Action.
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