People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work

Abstract

Does being disagreeable—that is, behaving in aggressive, selfish, and manipulative ways—help people attain power? This question has long captivated philosophers, scholars, and laypeople alike, and yet prior empirical findings have been inconclusive. In the current research, we conducted two preregistered prospective longitudinal studies in which we measured participants’ disagreeableness prior to entering the labor market and then assessed the power they attained in the context of their work organization ∼14 y later when their professional careers had unfolded. Both studies found disagreeable individuals did not attain higher power as opposed to extraverted individuals who did gain higher power in their organizations. Furthermore, the null relationship between disagreeableness and power was not moderated by individual differences, such as gender or ethnicity, or by contextual variables, such as organizational culture. What can account for this null relationship? A close examination of behavior patterns in the workplace found that disagreeable individuals engaged in two distinct patterns of behavior that offset each other’s effects on power attainment: They engaged in more dominant-aggressive behavior, which positively predicted attaining higher power, but also engaged in less communal and generous behavior, which predicted attaining less power. These two effects, when combined, appeared to cancel each other out and led to a null correlation between disagreeableness and power.

Taking charge and stepping in: Individuals who punish are rewarded with prestige and dominance

“…Meanwhile, co-existing with prestige-based status is influence that derives from dominance. For example, individuals with egocentric, aggressive and coercive personality dispositions have been shown to be influential in newly formed North American student task groups (Cheng et al, 2010(Cheng et al, , 2013Redhead et al, 2019), in mixed-age social groups in the United Kingdom (Brand & Mesoudi, 2019), and among employees and business managers in modern workplaces (Anderson, Sharps, Soto, & John, 2020). Similar findings have been made in a range of smallscale societies, where peer perceptions of dominance (e.g., fear) and dominance-related traits (e.g., physical formidability and position within a strong coalition) are linked to greater group-wide influence and control over resources among men (Garfield & Hagen, 2020; Below, we discuss the bi-directional association between these two forms of status and punishment.…”

“…Experiment evidence indicates that, when given a free choice, individuals in fact prefer to use a mix of both punishment and compensation as means to enforce cooperative norms (Lotz, Okimoto, Schlösser, & Fetchenhauer, 2011). Moreover, third-party helpers are rewarded with trust to an even greater degree than punishers, emphasising the utility of conflict resolution by non-punitive means (Anderson et al, 2020;Raihani & Bshary, 2015b). Thus, people may be more willing to reward cooperators-and punish those who do not reward cooperators-than to punish those that do not cooperate (Kiyonari & Barclay, 2008).…”

Nation’s Business and the environment: the U.S. Chamber’s changing relationships with DDT, “ecologists,” regulations, and renewable energy

“…(1977.10.38A). By the end of the decade, the first appearance of the word "obstructionist" to describe environmentalists appeared (1978.07.32), and the two words most often used to describe what environmentalists did were to "demand" and to "fight"-unpleasant combative associations associated with power-seeking and manipulation (Anderson et al 2020).…”

Dominance is necessary to explain human status hierarchies [exposition of three concerns]

“…As shown in Figure 2, hierarchical cluster analysis of these similarity ratings suggest 3 major clusters, which can roughly be described as: (1) prestige (benefit-delivery), (2) influence (general status, ambiguous in form), and (3) dominance (cost-infliction). More specifically, the first cluster (colored in purple) is comprised of prestige words (Achievement, Success, Recognition, Expertise, 6 These 27 status-related words and phrases were culled from existing theoretical and empirical work on social status (e.g., Anderson et al, 2020Anderson et al, , 2001Anderson & Kilduff, 2009;Cheng et al, 2010Cheng et al, , 2013Garfield & Hagen, 2020;Henrich & Gil-White, 2001;Lukaszewski et al, 2016;Maner, 2017;Maner & Case, 2016;Maner & Mead, 2010;Von Rueden et al, 2008).…”

“…In accordance with this emphasis, much of the empirical work guided by this theoretical framework (e.g., Cheng et al, 2013;Anderson et al, 2020;Brand & Mesoudi, 2019;Maner & Mead, 2010) has since sought to test how prestige and dominance contribute to differential influence, a prime index of deference and privilege in human dyadic interactions and social groups.…”