Are many sex/gender differences really power differences?

This research addresses the long-standing debate about the determinants of sex/gender differences. Evolutionary theorists trace many sex/gender differences back to natural selection and sex-specific adaptations. Sociocultural and biosocial theorists, in contrast, emphasize how societal roles and social power contribute to sex/gender differences beyond any biological distinctions. By connecting two empirical advances over the past two decades-6-fold increases in sex/gender difference meta-analyses and in experiments conducted on the psychological effects of power-the current research offers a novel empirical examination of whether power differences play an explanatory role in sex/gender differences. Our analyses assessed whether experimental manipulations of power and sex/gender differences produce similar psychological and behavioral effects. We first identified 59 findings from published experiments on power. We then conducted a P-curve of the experimental power literature and established that it contained evidential value. We next subsumed these effects of power into 11 broad categories and compared them to 102 similar meta-analytic sex/gender differences. We found that high-power individuals and men generally display higher agency, lower communion, more positive self-evaluations, and similar cognitive processes. Overall, 71% (72/102) of the sex/gender differences were consistent with the effects of experimental power differences, whereas only 8% (8/102) were opposite, representing a 9:1 ratio of consistent-to-inconsistent effects. We also tested for discriminant validity by analyzing whether power corresponds more strongly to sex/gender differences than extraversion: although extraversion correlates with power, it has different relationships with sex/gender differences. These results offer novel evidence that many sex/gender differences may be explained, in part, by power differences.

Thanks, but No Thanks: Unpacking the Relationship Between Relative Power and Gratitude.

Power and gratitude are universal features of social life and impact a wide range of intra- and interpersonal outcomes. Drawing on the social distance theory of power, we report four studies that examine how relative power influences feelings and expressions of gratitude. An archival analysis of author acknowledgements in published academic articles (N = 1,272) revealed that low-power authors expressed more gratitude than high-power authors. A pre-registered experiment (N = 283) involving live conversations online found that having relatively low power caused increased feelings and expressions of gratitude after benefiting from a favor. Another pre-registered experiment (N = 356) demonstrated that increased interpersonal orientation among lower power individuals and increased psychological entitlement among higher power individuals drove these effects. Finally, an archival analysis of conversational exchanges (N = 136,215) among Wikipedia editors revealed that relational history moderated the effect of relative power on gratitude expression. Overall, our findings highlight when and why relative power influences feelings and expressions of gratitude.

Getting back to the "new normal": Autonomy restoration during a global pandemic.

We investigate the psychological recovery process of full-time employees during the 2-week period at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Past research suggests that recovery processes start after stressors abate and can take months or years to unfold. In contrast, we build on autonomy restoration theory to suggest that recovery of impaired autonomy starts immediately even as a stressor is ongoing. Using growth curve modeling, we examined the temporal trajectories of two manifestations of impaired autonomy-powerlessness and (lack of) authenticity-to test whether recovery began as the pandemic unfolded. We tested our predictions using a unique experience-sampling dataset collected over a 2-week period beginning on the Monday after COVID-19 was declared a "global pandemic" by the World Health Organization and a "national emergency" by the U.S. Government (March 16-27, 2020). Results suggest that autonomy restoration was activated even as the pandemic worsened. Employees reported decreasing powerlessness and increasing authenticity during this period, despite their subjective stress-levels not improving. Further, the trajectories of recovery for both powerlessness and authenticity were steeper for employees higher (vs. lower) in neuroticism, a personality characteristic central to stress reactions. Importantly, these patterns do not emerge in a second experience-sampling study collected prior to the COVID-19 crisis (September 9-20, 2019), highlighting how the pandemic initially threatened employee autonomy, but also how employees began to recover their sense of autonomy almost immediately. The present research provides novel insights into employee well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggests that psychological recovery can begin during a stressful experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Hierarchical cultural values predict success and mortality in high-stakes teams.

Functional accounts of hierarchy propose that hierarchy increases group coordination and reduces conflict. In contrast, dysfunctional accounts claim that hierarchy impairs performance by preventing low-ranking team members from voicing their potentially valuable perspectives and insights. The current research presents evidence for both the functional and dysfunctional accounts of hierarchy within the same dataset. Specifically, we offer empirical evidence that hierarchical cultural values affect the outcomes of teams in high-stakes environments through group processes. Experimental data from a sample of expert mountain climbers from 27 countries confirmed that climbers expect that a hierarchical culture leads to improved team coordination among climbing teams, but impaired psychological safety and information sharing compared with an egalitarian culture. An archival analysis of 30,625 Himalayan mountain climbers from 56 countries on 5,104 expeditions found that hierarchy both elevated and killed in the Himalayas: Expeditions from more hierarchical countries had more climbers reach the summit, but also more climbers die along the way. Importantly, we established the role of group processes by showing that these effects occurred only for group, but not solo, expeditions. These findings were robust to controlling for environmental factors, risk preferences, expedition-level characteristics, country-level characteristics, and other cultural values. Overall, this research demonstrates that endorsing cultural values related to hierarchy can simultaneously improve and undermine group performance.

The too-much-talent effect: team interdependence determines when more talent is too much or not enough.

Five studies examined the relationship between talent and team performance. Two survey studies found that people believe there is a linear and nearly monotonic relationship between talent and performance: Participants expected that more talent improves performance and that this relationship never turns negative. However, building off research on status conflicts, we predicted that talent facilitates performance-but only up to a point, after which the benefits of more talent decrease and eventually become detrimental as intrateam coordination suffers. We also predicted that the level of task interdependence is a key determinant of when more talent is detrimental rather than beneficial. Three archival studies revealed that the too-much-talent effect emerged when team members were interdependent (football and basketball) but not independent (baseball). Our basketball analysis also established the mediating role of team coordination. When teams need to come together, more talent can tear them apart.

What Lies Within: Superscripting References to Reveal Research Trends.

Interpreting scholarly contributions solely on the basis of the number, and not nature, of citations is inherently flawed because contradictory as well as confirmatory findings feed into the same metric, capturing popularity at the expense of precision. I propose a citation and indexing procedure that would conveniently integrate information about research trends while imposing minimal burden on the producers and consumers of research. Under the proposed system, citations appearing in the reference list of research reports would be superscripted with letters corresponding to one of the following six categories: references to findings that are Consistent with the current findings, are Replicated by the current findings, are Inconsistent with the current findings, Failed to be replicated by the current findings, were used to build Theory, or were used to cite Methodologies. I explain how the resulting CRIF-TM data could be summarized and perpetually updated by an online indexing service. I provide an example to demonstrate how these superscripts could be conveniently and unobtrusively presented in the reference list of forthcoming articles. Finally, I examine the anticipated benefits, limitations, and implementation challenges of the proposed citation and indexing procedure.

The reappropriation of stigmatizing labels: the reciprocal relationship between power and self-labeling.

We present a theoretical model of reappropriation--taking possession of a slur previously used exclusively by dominant groups to reinforce another group's lesser status. Ten experiments tested this model and established a reciprocal relationship between power and self-labeling with a derogatory group term. We first investigated precursors to self-labeling: Group, but not individual, power increased participants' willingness to label themselves with a derogatory term for their group. We then examined the consequences of such self-labeling for both the self and observers. Self-labelers felt more powerful after self-labeling, and observers perceived them and their group as more powerful. Finally, these labels were evaluated less negatively after self-labeling, and this attenuation of stigma was mediated by perceived power. These effects occurred only for derogatory terms (e.g., queer, bitch), and not for descriptive (e.g., woman) or majority-group (e.g., straight) labels. These results suggest that self-labeling with a derogatory label can weaken the label's stigmatizing force.

The path to glory is paved with hierarchy: when hierarchical differentiation increases group effectiveness.

Two experiments examined the psychological and biological antecedents of hierarchical differentiation and the resulting consequences for productivity and conflict within small groups. In Experiment 1, which used a priming manipulation, hierarchically differentiated groups (i.e., groups comprising 1 high-power-primed, 1 low-power-primed, and 1 baseline individual) performed better on a procedurally interdependent task than did groups comprising exclusively either all high-power-primed or all low-power-primed individuals. There were no effects of hierarchical differentiation on performance on a procedurally independent task. Experiment 2 used a biological marker of dominance motivation (prenatal testosterone exposure as measured by a digit-length ratio) to manipulate hierarchical differentiation. The pattern of results from Experiment 1 was replicated; mixed-testosterone groups achieved greater productivity than did groups comprising all high-testosterone or all low-testosterone individuals. Furthermore, intragroup conflict mediated the productivity decrements for the high-testosterone but not the low-testosterone groups. This research suggests possible directions for future research and the need to further delineate the conditions and types of hierarchy under which hierarchical differentiation enhances rather than undermines group effectiveness.