GROUP COMMITMENT AS A MODERATOR OF ATTRIBUTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL-RESPONSES TO POWER USE

This study used 50 Natural Science and English Literature students who held differential behavioural expectations of ingroup and outgroup me mbers to investigate evaluative, attributional and behavioural respons es to power use in an Experimental research paradigm. It was hypothesi zed that subordinates interpret frequent power use by a superior diffe rently depending on whether it is consistent or inconsistent with prev ious expectations. Frequent power use results in decreased satisfactio n and negative evaluations of the superior. Attributional ratings indi cated that when an outgroup member engaged in frequent power use, this negatively evaluated behaviour was attributed to the superior's group membership, and resulted in decreased cooperation on the part of the subordinate. To the extent that frequent power use of an ingroup membe r was attributed to external circumstances, subordinates maintained a sense of commitment to the ingroup superior, which resulted in display s of cooperative behaviour. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.