Using Power to Elevate Status: Observers of Power Use and Philanthropy

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Sociological research distinguishes between power, defined as the structural capacity to attain resources, and status, defined as a position of prestige and honor based on expectations for an individual's contributions to goals. Research has demonstrated how status can lead to power, but has had more difficulty demonstrating that a position of power can be used to elevate an individual's status. Whereas status can be used to gain a material advantage that leads to power, use of power often produces a negative reaction in those on whom it is used and therefore interferes with the status advantage that might come from power. To help understand this puzzling inconsistency involving these two otherwise closely related concepts, this project develops a theory that describes two ways power can be used to elevate status. First, power users may elevate their status in the eyes of observers of the power use (i.e., those who do not experience the negative reactions that those directly exploited by power do). Second, power users may gain status through philanthropy, or voluntary contributions to the community. Philanthropy may ameliorate negative reactions to power use and change the perception that power users are selfish. The project tests the two components of the theory with two experiments. In the first experiment, observers watch power being used in a network exchange setting, and then have the opportunity to cooperate in a task with either a high power or low power participant from the exchange they observed. The influence of the high or low power participant from the previous exchange on the cooperative task provides a measure of status. In the second experiment, partners in a power exchange network differ according to how much the dominant partner contributes to the success of the group, and then give ratings in subsequent exchanges of the status or influence of the power-wielding partner. Besides demonstrating the validity of the theory, the results shed light on the willingness of people to volunteer for activities that provide little in the way of power gain, but may increase status.