Motivation for Power Why Do People Want to Be in Charge?
Author: Jeremy Nicholson Publisher: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/persuasion-bias-and-choice/202112/motivation-for-power-why-do-people-want-to-be-in-charge Publish Date: 2021-12-8 Review Date: Status:⌛️
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This difference echoes back to Mary Parker Follett’s (1868-1933) earlier distinction between power over others (i.e., coercion) versus power with others (i.e., co-action) in management situations (Melé & Rosanas, 2003). Furthermore, much as Follett noted almost a century before, Cislak and associates (2018) also found that each type of motivation led to different leadership behaviors and outcomes. Those who sought power to control others tended to be aggressive and exploitative.
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Given the negative (and self-defeating) effects of pursuing power over others, why do people do it? The answer, quite simply, is because they are not trusting. As Das and Teng (2001) explain, making alliances with others is risky. You either have to trust that they are willing and able to cooperate (increasing everyone’s self-determination and personal control), or you have to seek external controls over them to forcibly influence their motivation and behavior (decreasing everyone’s self-determination instead). Put more poetically by Alm (2015), the choice is to build chains of trust that unite individuals in cooperation, or chains of control that enforce and coerce instead.
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Furthermore, as Simpson (2007) explains, trust is a combination of interpersonal and dispositional factors. Therefore, someone may not trust in a particular context for interpersonal reasons (e.g., when a specific partner has already acted in a selfish or incompetent manner). In contrast, someone may not trust others in general for dispositional reasons (e.g., having insecure attachment or low self-esteem).