The Nature of Power
Power contains certain properties. First, it services both good and bad intentions. People use, misuse, or abuse power (Goodyear-Smith & Beutow, 2001). Next, power succeeds as one’s ability allows.
As with all abilities, people with power may or may not choose to use it; when they do choose to use it, they may be successful or unsuccessful (Huston, 1983). Parents might not use their power in some circumstances because they want their children to learn by making their own choices. Of course, parents can try to use their power to influence their children’s behavior, but the children make their own choices too despite their parents’ attempted use of power. Third, to use their power, people must perceive that they have power and incorporate that understanding into their identity (Powers & Reiser, 2005). Power offers little strategic advantage if the person does not recognize the power s/he has. A newly promoted supervisor must realize the new levels of power that come with the position and the different actions s/he can now take because of increased power. Finally, people need to employ power when it is appropriate to do so and not capriciously (Duetsch, 1973). Overusing one’s capacity to reward or punish can backfire when people stop caring about the rewards or punishments (Kelman, 1961).Scholars in various disciplines have produced alternative definitions of power, but they have concurred on basic concepts that help us to understand power. McDonald (1980) describes such features. For example, McDonald observed that power: (1) includes the ability of a person to achieve his/her goals for an interaction; (2) should be understood as related to a system rather than to an individual; (3) is dynamic, not static; (4) is perceptual and behavioral; (5) involves an “asymmetrical relationship,” where one person tends to have his/her way, even though a person’s degree of power is situational; and (6) is multidimensional.
Defining power will help how it plays out in conflict.
First, from a broad perspective, power is “a relational concept functioning between the person and his or her environment” (Coleman, 2000, p. 111). Power is also evident in a more specific yet inclusive view that defines power as “the capacity to produce intended effects and, in particular, the ability to influence the behavior of another person even in the face of resistance” (Dunbar & Abra, 2010, p. 658). Second, power differs from its sibling, “dominance.” According to Dunbar and Abra, dominance “refers to context- and relationship-dependent interactional behaviors in which power is made salient and influence is achieved” (p. 658).A fundamental difference between power and dominance, then, concerns how dominance plays out in interaction with communication behaviors. We will attend to verbal power strategies in a moment. For now, consider how power was nonverbally communicated in Dubar and Burgoon’s (2005) study:
Participants who were more fluent in their speech, who were more argumentative, who were more vocally expressive, who used greater numbers of illustrator gestures, who were more facially pleasant, who were more dynamic in their bodily movements, or who were less anxious were seen as dominant by both third-party raters and the participants themselves. (pp. 677-8)
For instance, the visual dominance ratio represents power this way: The more powerful person looks at the other while talking but looks away when the other person is speaking. For a complete description of dominance behaviors, see Burgoon et al. (1998).