Does power corrupt or does it facilitate goal attainment? Dominance and functionalist perspectives in psychological models of power

Paweł Ziemiański

doi:10.18290/rpsych.2017.20.3-4en

Paweł Ziemiański Gdansk University of Technology, Faculty of Management and Economics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rpsych.2017.20.3-4en

Keywords: power; psychological models of power; social perception

Abstract

This article describes how psychological models of power adopt the dominance and functionalist perspective in examining the influence of power on power holders. According to the dominance perspective, power leads to a desire to increase dominance over others and has a negative and corruptive influence on the person holding it, whereas the functionalist perspective puts emphasis on how power aids the attainment of the power holder’s and the group’s goals and should therefore trigger processes helpful in goal attainment. The main object of analysis is the assumptions about how power influences social perception.

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