Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior.

Piff, Paul K.; Kraus, Michael W.; Côté, Stéphane; Cheng, Bonnie Hayden; Keltner, Dacher

doi:10.1037/a0020092

Cited by 1,163 publications

(1,303 citation statements)

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“…When given power, individuals become more self-focused and less concerned about others' welfare (Piff, Kraus, Côté, Cheng & Keltner, 2010;van Kleef & Côté, 2007), less empathetic (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi & Gruenfeld, 2006;Hogeveen, Inzlicht & Obhi, 2014) and less compassionate (van Kleef, Oveis, van der Lowe, LuoKogan, Goetz & Keltner, 2008). Power causes individuals to devalue the performance of others and take credit for others' contributions (Kipnis, 1972), become overconfident in their own ideas (Sivanathan & Galinsky, 2007;Fast, Sivanathan, Mayer & Galinsky, 2012) and take others' opinions into account less (Galinsky et al, 2003;Brinol, Petty, Valle, Rucker & Becerra et al, 2007).…”

Section: The Effects Of Power On Group Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Failure at the top: How power undermines collaborative performance.

Hildreth

Anderson

2016

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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All too commonly, we see groups of leaders fail to accomplish their stated goals when working together -legislators who cannot agree on a bill, heads of state who cannot draft meaningful environmental policy, or boards of trustees who make disastrous decisions for their school. The current research examines whether groups of leaders fail as often as they do in part because of the power each leader is accustomed to possessing. Multiple studies found high power individuals, when working in groups, performed worse than did other groups: individuals randomly assigned power in an initial task were less creative when they then worked together in groups on a subsequent task (Study 1A). Individuals with higher power who worked together in groups were also less likely to reach agreement on a difficult negotiation task, whether these groups comprised actual executives from an extant organization (Study 2) or students randomly assigned power in the laboratory (Study 3). Mediation analyses suggest that groups of high power individuals performed worse because they fought over their relative status in the group, were less focused on the task, and shared information with each other less effectively.Keywords: power, groups, status, conflict, performance, creativity, negotiation FAILURE AT THE TOP 3 Individuals in positions of leadership are given inordinate power. They have disproportionate control when they interact with those they lead and their ideas, decisions, and opinions hold more sway than those of others. But, what happens when leaders have to interact and work with other leaders? How does the power they are accustomed to possessing shape their effectiveness when working with others who also hold power? This question is critical because it is often the case that important decisions and problems are addressed not by individual leaders but by groups of leaders -in government legislatures, boards of directors, or meetings between heads of state, for example. If groups of leaders fail, the damage can be profound. Legislators who cannot agree on a fiscal budget risk severe economic costs, boards of trustees who set bad policies for their university can reduce the quality of their education, and leaders of disputing countries who cannot resolve their differences risk escalating their conflict into war.The research literature has been surprisingly quiet on this question. Although a substantial body of research has examined how the possession of power can shape myriad cognitive, affective, and motivational processes (for reviews, see Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003;Guinote & Vescio, 2010), this work has focused heavily on how the possession of power affects people in individual tasks or making individual decisions. Relatively little research has examined the effects of power in interactive or group contexts, let alone examined contexts in which powerholders interact and work with each other.The current research aimed to fill this lacuna.On the one hand, one might hypothesize that power would help groups of leaders...

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Section: The Effects Of Power On Group Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Failure at the top: How power undermines collaborative performance.

Hildreth

Anderson

2016

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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“…Social class. Consistent with prior research (Johnson et al, 2011;Piff, Kraus, Côté, Cheng, & Keltner, 2010), family income was used as a measure of objective social (Downey & Feldman, 1996) was administered to statistically isolate rejection sensitivity based on social class from rejection sensitivity based on individual characteristics. Respondents consider six social scenarios (e.g., "You ask someone in one of your classes to coffee") and then indicate (a) their level of anxiety over rejection and (b) how much they expect to be accepted versus rejected on 1-6 scales.…”

Section: Main Predictorsmentioning

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Social class and academic achievement in college: The interplay of rejection sensitivity and entity beliefs.

Rheinschmidt¹,

Mendoza‐Denton²

2014

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Undergraduates, especially those from lower income backgrounds, may perceive their social class background as different or disadvantaged relative to that of peers and worry about negative social treatment. We hypothesized that concerns about discrimination based on one's social class (i.e., class-based rejection sensitivity or RS-class) would be damaging to undergraduates' achievement outcomes particularly among entity theorists, who perceive their personal characteristics as fixed. We reasoned that a perceived capacity for personal growth and change, characteristic of incremental theorists, would make the pursuit of a college degree and upward mobility seem more worthwhile and attainable. We found evidence across 3 studies that dispositionally held and experimentally primed entity (vs. incremental) beliefs predicted college academic performance as a function of RS-class. Studies 1a and 1b documented that high levels of both entity beliefs and RS-class predicted lower self-reported and official grades, respectively, among undergraduates from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds. In Study 2, high entity beliefs and RS-class at matriculation predicted decreased year-end official grades among lower class Latino students. Study 3 established the causal relationship of entity (vs. incremental) beliefs on academic test performance as a function of RS-class. We observed worse test performance with higher RS-class levels following an entity (vs. incremental) prime, an effect driven by lower income students. Findings from a 4th study suggest that entity theorists with RS-class concerns tend to believe less in upward mobility and, following academic setbacks, are prone to personal attributions of failure, as well as hopelessness. Implications for education and intervention are discussed.

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“…Second, within environments with physical inequality, we refer to variation in the salience of that physical inequity as situational inequality: for example, a floor plan that requires staff to walk past executive offices to arrive at their cubicles, or stadium or airplane seating that requires passing through the expensive seats to arrive at the less expensive ones. Indeed, previous research suggests that people's perceptions of their relative socioeconomic status are influenced by situational factors (15)(16)(17) and that the salience of inequality exerts an impact, as evidenced by poorer health outcomes in impoverished neighborhoods that border wealthier areas (18).…”

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confidence: 99%

Physical and situational inequality on airplanes predicts air rage

DeCelles

Norton

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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We posit that the modern airplane is a social microcosm of classbased society, and that the increasing incidence of "air rage" can be understood through the lens of inequality. Research on inequality typically examines the effects of relatively fixed, macrostructural forms of inequality, such as socioeconomic status; we examine how temporary exposure to both physical and situational inequality, induced by the design of environments, can foster antisocial behavior. We use a complete set of all onboard air rage incidents over several years from a large, international airline to test our predictions. Physical inequality on airplanes-that is, the presence of a first class cabin-is associated with more frequent air rage incidents in economy class. Situational inequality-boarding from the front (requiring walking through the first class cabin) versus the middle of the plane-also significantly increases the odds of air rage in both economy and first class. We show that physical design that highlights inequality can trigger antisocial behavior on airplanes. More broadly, these results point to the importance of considering the design of environments-from airplanes to office layouts to stadium seating-in understanding both the form and emergence of antisocial behavior.physical inequality | situational inequality | antisocial behavior | social class | air rage R ecent media attention has been devoted to the phenomenon colloquially known as "air rage" (1, 2): a form of antisocial behavior by airplane passengers becoming abusive or unruly, antagonizing crew members and other passengers, and endangering flight safety. Such incidents can be emotionally traumatic for passengers and staff, and expensive and reputationally damaging for airlines (3). Although virtually no empirical research examines the antecedents of this hazardous and increasingly common phenomenon, popular explanations for air rage include crowded planes, frustrating delays, and shrinking seats (1, 2). We advance an alternative view: the modern airplane reflects a social microcosm of class-based society, making inequality salient to passengers through both the physical design of the plane (the presence of a first class cabin) and, more subtly, the boarding procedure (whether economy passengers must pass through the first class cabin). We hypothesize that both types of inequality on airplanesphysical (presence of first class) and situational (boarding location)-trigger antisocial behavior (negative, often aggressive behaviors that are harmful to others) (4).Since Durkheim (5), scholars across disciplines have investigated inequality and social class. The influence of social class-individuals' material resources and relative rank in the socioeconomic hierarchy-is ubiquitous, and can affect critical outcomes, such as health, well-being, emotions, and behavior (6-12). Economic scholars often conceptualize class as socioeconomic status, comprised of relatively chronic and macrostructurally determined factors, such as education, income, and geographic location (e.g....

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Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior.

Cited by 1,163 publications

References 87 publications

Failure at the top: How power undermines collaborative performance.

Failure at the top: How power undermines collaborative performance.

Social class and academic achievement in college: The interplay of rejection sensitivity and entity beliefs.

Physical and situational inequality on airplanes predicts air rage

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