A psychology of power that is embedded in societal structures.

Curr Opin Psychol

Yale University, School of Management, United States. Electronic address:

Published: June 2020

AI Article Synopsis

  • The text examines the psychology of power within societal structures, focusing on race, gender, and social class in North America.
  • It argues that studies of power lack depth when they don't consider these societal influences, particularly the connections between power and prosocial behavior.
  • The authors suggest that to fully understand social power, research must be more contextually grounded and extend beyond academic settings to reflect real-life experiences and institutions.

Article Abstract

Here, we look ahead to a psychology of power that is embedded in societal structures, specifically with regard to the North American context of race, gender, and social class. We argue that studies of power are limited when decoupled from these societal structures of power and we make this argument by examining dominant working definitions and links between power and prosociality. We end with a suggestion that a fully embedded and historical psychological account of social power will require greater constraints on generality, additional descriptive work on the experience of power in everyday life, and methods and samples that bring research on social power out of university spaces and into the places, spaces, and institutions where that power is intertwined.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.018DOI Listing

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