Power, Reputation, and Cooperation: the Reputational Account of Power

Asymmetries in power permeate social life, relationships, and groups. Previous studies have long investigated the role of power in shaping cooperation, yielding mixed evidence as to whether and how power affects cooperation. Synthesizing the evolutionary psychological literature on reputation-based cooperation with the social psychological literature on power, I propose a novel theory on power: the reputational account of power. More specifically, I hold that power asymmetry shapes cooperation via reputational concern. In 14 studies with several mini meta-analyses, I have found support for the theory.

In Chapter 2, I present four correlational studies (Studies 1 - 4) revealing the association between reputational concern and power. In addition, I have found that others' power (i.e., target power) shapes prosocial behaviour via reputational concern in organizational and friendship contexts; the more power another individual has, the more prosocial people are to the person. Importantly, it was suggested that across the four studies, it is target power rather than one's own power that was strongly related to reputational concern and reputation-based prosocial behaviour.

In Chapter 3, I present three studies designed to experimentally manipulate one's own power, using commonly used power priming methods. Results revealed that an increased sense of power did not reduce reputational concern; feeling power does not liberate people from reputational concern. This is in line with the findings from Chapter 2 that suggested that target power, rather than one's own power, is related to reputational concern.

In Chapter 4, I report four studies in which I manipulated target power. Namely, I developed a novel paradigm in which participants were put into a hierarchically structured group and played economic games with others varying in power (i.e., higher power, equal power, and lower power group members). These studies together suggested that when people were faced with higher power in-group members, they felt more reputational concern and displayed more cooperation compared when faced with equal and lower power in-group members.

In Chapter 5, I present three studies that were designed to further extend the finding from Chapter 4 to intergroup prosocial behaviour. More specifically, I explored whether individuals favour in-group members over out-group members regardless of power asymmetries. I found that people were more prosocial towards higher power in-group members than out-group members. Nevertheless, they did not discriminate between lower power in-group members and out-group members. Thus, in-group favouritism was conditional to power.

Overall, I have collated correlational and experimental evidence supporting the theory. I have demonstrated that when people interact with others holding power over themselves (i.e., when target power is high), they feel an increased level of reputational concern and, therefore, they display an increased level of cooperation. The reputational account of power contributes to diverse fields of studies by offering a novel interdisciplinary framework to understand when and how power influences cooperation. In addition, given the ubiquity of power asymmetries in daily lives, my findings have practical implications and help us understand how power shapes social behaviours, especially prosocial behaviour in daily lives. Promising future directions are discussed.