Gender, self-esteem, and focus of interest in the use of power strategies by adolescents in conflict situations

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 1999 by Joseph Schwarzwald, Meni Koslowsky

Conflict is a fact of life that can be destructive or productive, depending on how it is controlled and channeled. It is all around us, ranging from mild disagreements to mortal combat. Raven and Kruglanski (1970) perceived interpersonal conflict as the "tension between two or more social entities (individuals, groups, or large organizations) which arise from incompatibility of actual or desired responses" (p. 70). They argued that it is important to consider the process of conflict resolution as it may affect the quality of the relationship between the parties involved. The implications are broad and encompass a wide range of social interactions. For example, if two individuals disagree on an issue and one party, in order to obtain compliance from the other party, resorts to threats, he or she, regardless of whether compliance is obtained, may evoke resentment and distrust thereby hampering the relationship. By contrast, resorting to convincing arguments and relating to the other as an equal creates trust without harming the relationship.

Considerable evidence indicates that the preference of certain power strategies over others is associated with traits such as self-esteem, self-confidence, Type-A, and self-monitoring needs (Baron, 1989; Kipnis, 1976). The association between power usage and the resulting relationship as well as that between personal variables and power usage have already been demonstrated for adult populations. Do adolescents show similar tendencies?

By delving into this issue, it may be possible to determine if individuals, at a relatively young age, already prefer certain power strategies and to examine if personal needs or social variables are involved in this choice. Such an examination is more that just an academic issue as it is likely to also have important social ramifications. It provides a description of the quality of influence relationships at a young age and may help in understanding the origins of adult behavior. By identifying at an early age the strategies preferred by individuals, social scientists might want to develop interventions for encouraging desirable power strategies and discouraging the undesirable ones.

In trying to understand how compliance is gained in conflict situations, investigators have used the concepts of social power and influence tactics. The two terms have sometimes been used interchangeably. However, it has been suggested in the literature (i.e., Bass, 1981; Hinkin & Schriesheim, 1989; Podsakoff & Schriesheim, 1985; Stahelski & Paynton, 1995) that a clear distinction needs to be made. Social power reflects the repertoire available to an individual whereas influence tactics refer to the actual usage of specific behaviors in a situation. Thus, a student may comply with a teacher's request because of the imagined or perceived social power repertoire available to the teacher or because of an actual tactic like the use of a specific reward, such as a higher grade. In addition, in this study, we posited the term power strategy to define a global category or an underlying factor of related tactics.

The study of power sources has often employed French and Raven's (1959; Raven, 1965, 1983) taxonomy in conceptualizing interpersonal influence (Podsakoff & Schriesheim, 1985; Yukl & Falbe, 1991). It has served researchers in areas such as familial relations (MacDonald, 1980; Raven, Centers, & Rodrigues, 1975; Rollins & Thomas, 1975), education (Aguinis, Nesler, Quigley, Lee, & Tedeschi, 1996; Erchul & Raven, 1997; Jamieson & Thomas, 1974), marketing and consumer psychology (Gaski, 1986; Mackenzie & Zaichkowski, 1980), and health and medicine (Raven, 1988; Rodin & Janis, 1982).

In its original formulation (French & Raven, 1959), the taxonomy identified five power sources available for gaining compliance (coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent) with information added later on (Raven, 1965, 1983). Recently, in his power/interaction model of interpersonal influence, Raven (1992, 1993) has broadened the original taxonomy to 11 power sources (coercion and reward have been differentiated into personal and impersonal strategies and legitimacy has been separated into four strategies: position, equity, reciprocity, and dependence, with adherence to norms common to all of the latter strategies). Further analysis has indicated that the 11 strategies can be subsumed under two overall categories, harsh and soft. Harsh strategies include impersonal reward, personal and impersonal coercion, legitimacy of position, equity, and reciprocity; soft strategies include personal reward, expertise, reference, information, and legitimacy of dependence (Raven, Schwarzwald, & Koslowsky, 1998). Other distinctions among strategies, using somewhat different terms, have appeared previously (Bass, 1981; Kipnis, 1984; Yukl & Falbe, 1991).

More importantly, the recent model is not just a classification system; rather, it assumes that rational considerations, individual concerns, and situational constraints determine the choice from the available power sources. Choice is rational, as the influencing person takes into consideration availability, acceptability, costs, and effectiveness. Thus, the choice of coercion involves the risk of being disliked by the other person; yet it may emphasize the power user's advantage over the other person thereby increasing the former's self-esteem.