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The powerful want to , the powerless have to : Perceived constraint moderates causal attributions
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Brion, Sebastien |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | It is popularly believed that powerful people enjoy a nearly-absolute lack of constraints, and that powerless people suffer under overwhelming constraints; in fact, such differences largely define the social categories of ‘powerful person’ and ‘powerless person.’ This association of power-related social categories and constraint constitutes a stereotype that may lead perceivers to overlook other, more diagnostic information when explaining others’ behavior. As a result, the actions of powerholders may tend to be seen as dispositionally motivated and those of the powerless as situationally motivated. This should occur because of both real differences in constraint, and bias in the failure to account for other, more diagnostic information about constraint. Two studies support these predictions. In Study 1, participants judged powerless workers as more situationally motivated, especially under coercion, than both controls and powerholders, who were judged as more dispositional. In Study 2, given more fine-grained information about constraints and power, participants’ attributions reflected both accurate use of this information and bias. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. One way in which powerful people seem fortunate is that they seem able to do whatever they want. Powerless people, on the other hand, are subject to limitations and the control of others. As a result, when we hear about the actions of the powerful, we interpret them differently from those of people who are powerless; we may assume that the powerholder intended his or her action, but the powerless person was simply forced—by circumstance or a stronger party—to act. For example, imagine that you go to work on Monday and hear that John, a member of your department, was working all weekend. How do you and your co-workers explain John’s behavior? In this paper, we suggest that you will use John’s power in the organization as a cue about the likely causes of his behavior. We suggest that if John is a lowly employee, you may assume that he was compelled to be there. If John is the boss, however, you might be more likely to assume that he chose to be there, that his behavior reflected his own volition or |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://msbfile03.usc.edu/digitalmeasures/overbeck/intellcont/overbecktiedensbrion2006-2.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://msbfile03.usc.edu/digitalmeasures/overbeck/intellcont/OverbeckTiedensBrion2006-2.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Categories Causality Choose (action) Constraint (mathematics) Goto Html Link Type - copyright John Collison John D. Wiley REM Sleep Behavior Disorder Stereotype (UML) Volition attribution |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
