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The Effects Of Norm Violation On The Perception Of Power

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Investigation of the Effects of Norm Violation
On the Perception of Power Power governs our society. A powerful person is one that has authority over others. This sense of authority relieves them of the restrictions a person of lesser power might face, allowing them to make and break rules. The four studies conducted in “Breaking the Rules to Rise to Power: How Norm Violators Gain Power in the Eyes of Others” by Gerben A. Van Kleef, Astrid C. Homan, Catrin Finkenauer, Seval Gu ̈ndemir and Eftychia Stamkou, explores the concept of power and transgression. Such that if powerful people are expected to act against the norm, then acting against the norm should make people seem more powerful. The overall study focused on the relationship …show more content…

(Van Kleef et al., 2011)
The study examined the response of 25 females and 15 men with a mean age of 19.53 on two scales. The first scale was a 25-question questionnaire consisting of adjectives that described social impressions of power and norm violation, which was then rated on a scale from 1 to 7 with 1 being definitely not and 7 being definitely. The second scale asked participants to indicate the extent to which the power statements ‘‘This person is influential’’; ‘‘ . . . has a leadership position’’; ‘‘ . . . is in charge of subordinates’’; ‘‘ . . . enjoys considerable authority’’(Van Kleef et al., 2011), applied to the person depicted in the scenario.
Results and Discussions Participants rated the actor that took the cup of coffee from the personnel with a higher norm violation score than the actor that went to the bathroom. This indicated that they recognized that the behavior of the actor that took the coffee cup was wrong. Despite that, the participants rated that actor to be more powerful than the actor that went to the bathroom on both scales. This gives the first evidence that violating the norm influences the perception of power (Van Kleef et al., 2011).
Study 2: The Bookkeeper Study 2 employed a different type of norm violation to examine if the affects show in study 1 would repeat. One hundred and sixty-nine participants of unspecified age and sex were asked to read a scenario about a bookkeeper that follows the rule and one that does

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