The Effects Of Dispositional And Role Power Fit On Self-Expression And Self-Other Congruence

Over the past two decades, social power has emerged as a major topic of inquiry among social and personality psychologists. For example, power has been linked to particular types of social information processing, emotions, and behaviors. The central claim of the approach/inhibition theory of power is that high power elicits approach tendencies, whereas low power activates inhibitory ones. Building on this claim, Keltner et al. argued that, because high power frees people to both pursue rewards and be less vigilant of threats, high power is associated with a greater likelihood of expressing state-and trait-consistent behaviors. Consistent with this, research has shown that people high in dispositional or situational power express their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes more than their low-power counterparts.Across a strikingly broad literature, P-E fit (person-environment fit)has been conceptualized in terms of the match between people's trait dispositions and work settings or social roles, their values and organizational cultures, and their ideological beliefs and institutional environments. P-E fit has been associated with a host of consequence, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work-related adjustment, and academic achievement. The research of Berrencourt et al. suggesting a link between P-E fit and self-expression. These researchers hypothesized that social roles offer people the opportunity to satisfy a variety of psychological needs, including autonomy, which was defined in terms of self-reported self-expression. They reasoned that enacting a social role can satisfy autonomy needs to the degree that dictates and expectations associated with the role correspond to one's personal characteristics. Such correspondence allows people to express themselves-that is, to act in accordance with their personal beliefs and values.In most of the studies on power, power has been operationalized in either dispositional (such as a generalized sence of power) or situational (such as physical cues in the environment that prime the concepts of high or low power) terms. The present studies depart from such research by explicitly focusing on the joint effects of dispositional and situational power, and tested the difference of self-expression under the dispositional-role power fit conditiongs and dispositional-role power conflict conditions. Across three studies tested the hypothesis that when people are in a high-or low-power role that fits their dispositional beliefs about their capacity to influence others, such fit leads them to express a wide array of their states and traits, thus enhancing their likelihood of being perceived by others in a manner congruent with their self-judgments. Conversely, when people are assigned to a role that conflicts with their dispositioanl beliefs about their capacity to influence others, this conflict should negatively impact self-expression and self-other congruence. Following are the principal results and conclusions:(1)The low-power participants have better self-expression under the low-power role conditions than the high-power role conditions.(2) The high-power participants have better self-expression under the high-power role conditions than the low-power role conditions.(3) Under dispositional and role pwer fit conditions, the confederate's ratings of participants' personality traits were congruent with participants' self-reported personality traits.(4) Under dispositional and role pwer fit conditions, the three outside observers ratings of participants' personality traits were congruent with participants' self-reported personality traits.