Power By Van Vugt: An Analysis

Power can mean many different things to many different people. Some people use the power they have in positive ways and some people use it in negative ways. In an article regarding power by van Vugt, he discusses five ways having power can be negative (van Vught, 2013). Those five ways are power makes you selfish, it makes a person lack empathy, makes a person overconfident, other people do not like a person when they have power, and power could make a person die young (van Vught, 2013). However there is a type of power which is not discussed in the article, and that is the idea of altruistic power. Altruism can be described as behavior which is directed at helping another person in which the helper does not receive an award , it is voluntary …show more content…
This continues to the present day. Being the “baby” of the family, I have received unsolicited advice from my older siblings on how to handle issues with my children. By they way, they both do not have children. My parents held a powerful role over me. I depended on them for childcare when my children were younger. I also depended on them financially. Because of this, my parents deserve the upmost respect from me even when something they have said to me upsets me. I have to keep my emotions in check. In the greater society, my ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation has not caused a power struggle for me. I realize being a Caucasian, straight woman in the United States carries its own power. However, I understand the power struggle other people of different races, ethnicities, and sexually orientations have and I search for ways to change it. I cannot in good conscious call this a disability, but I am left handed. Sometimes I feel a loss of power in a world that is geared towards being right handed. Finding a left-handed desk while in college was a cause of celebration fo me. When I found one, I often thought about ways I could drag it from class to class for me to use. Pens with chains attached to them are always a cause for …show more content…
I would like to be powerful to help make things better for my family, my children, and the clients I serve. There was a time when I experienced a loss of power in my professional life. I worked at the same nursing home of 15 years. There wer two other social workers I worked with there. The director and I had worked together for ten years. The other social worker was there about 5 years and the three of us worked together like a well oiled machine and I felt we were a powerful force together. My director left for maternity leave and decided she was not coming back to work after the baby was born. At the same time, there was a new administrator who hire the social services director she had previously worked with. Things went completely downhill as a result. I felt a huge loss of power. There was a great deal of tension between myself, the new director, and the administrator. I was not used to being micro-managed, or just being told to do things without a conversation or my ability to put in my input. I felt like I was constantly being belittled and harassed by these two people. I never felt like that in the 15 years I worked there. I was depressed and full of anxiety on a daily basis. There are times when I feel I did not handle the loss of power in positive way by being argumentative and pushes back, but I felt disrespected, and I did not feel I was being treated in a professional manner. This feeling of