A familiar proverb asserts that “power corrupts” but could corruption also signify power? The study “Breaking the Rules to Rise to Power: How Norm Violators Gain Power in the Eyes of Others” hypothesized that the act of violating a norm fuels an individual’s perceived power because it implies that an individual has the power to act according to their own volition despite societal pressure. To investigate this theory, the team authored four studies. Yielding power involves being uninfluenced by others, having the capacity to control outcomes and administer punishment. A mark of powerful individuals is that they tend to act according to their own volition regardless of the appropriateness. Consequently, they defy the norms of society - the
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Several factors make the studies conducted problematic in gaining a complete understanding of the phenomenon. For one thing, the mean age of the recorded participants was 20 for most of the studies. At the around the age of twenty, it is safe to assume that most participants would not be classified as high power individuals. The majority of the participants were also women, who also tend to be perceived as low power individuals in a lot of cultures. This study effectively shows perceptions of power from the eyes of a low power audience without exploring the power perceptions of high power individuals. High power individuals are often the bestower of power, so predicting if someone will be elevated in their power based on norm violating behavior is reliant on the perception of the powerful. Another factor that influenced the effectiveness of the studies is that the majority of the studies had the participants observing remote norm violation scenes through text descriptions and videos. Rarely would a person be that far removed from people in power positions with whom their perception could have any real influence. The study did effectively show how power perceptions in modern politics might play out, as the power bestowers are removed from interactions with them and must rely on written and video narratives. The study would have benefited from replacing one of the duplicate text based experiments with another face-to-face experiment. The study also suffers in norm violation diversity. Some violations were repeated (putting feet up) and all of the violations possessed a negative undercurrent. It is unfair to conclude that norm violations increase perceptions of power when only negative violations were
Several factors make the studies conducted problematic in gaining a complete understanding of the phenomenon. For one thing, the mean age of the recorded participants was 20 for most of the studies. At the around the age of twenty, it is safe to assume that most participants would not be classified as high power individuals. The majority of the participants were also women, who also tend to be perceived as low power individuals in a lot of cultures. This study effectively shows perceptions of power from the eyes of a low power audience without exploring the power perceptions of high power individuals. High power individuals are often the bestower of power, so predicting if someone will be elevated in their power based on norm violating behavior is reliant on the perception of the powerful. Another factor that influenced the effectiveness of the studies is that the majority of the studies had the participants observing remote norm violation scenes through text descriptions and videos. Rarely would a person be that far removed from people in power positions with whom their perception could have any real influence. The study did effectively show how power perceptions in modern politics might play out, as the power bestowers are removed from interactions with them and must rely on written and video narratives. The study would have benefited from replacing one of the duplicate text based experiments with another face-to-face experiment. The study also suffers in norm violation diversity. Some violations were repeated (putting feet up) and all of the violations possessed a negative undercurrent. It is unfair to conclude that norm violations increase perceptions of power when only negative violations were