Power Motive and Action-Orientation 1
Running head: POWER MOTIVE AND ACTION-ORIENTATION
The Power Motive and Action-Orientation: An Archival Study of U.S. Presidents
and a Laboratory Study of Helping Behavior
Joe C. Magee
New York University
Under review, European Journal of Social Psychology
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Abstract
Two studies tested the hypothesis that individuals with a high power motive are more action-oriented in their thought and behavior than individuals with a low power motive. The results from multiple methods (archival and laboratory) and domains (politics and health-care) provide evidence of a motivational basis for power decreasing deliberation and increasing implementation and action. In Study 1, an archival analysis found that U.S. presidents with a high power motive, measured by motive imagery in their inaugural addresses, were more action-oriented (i.e., less deliberative, more active) than low-power motive presidents during their tenure in office. Study 2 further investigated the power motive-action-orientation relationship by identifying two types of power motivation: prosocial and antisocial. When presented with the option to help others, participants with a higher prosocial power motive showed more decisiveness and a greater tendency toward implementation than did those with a lower prosocial power motive. These findings are discussed with respect to power and the behavioral approach system, different methods of measuring motivational constructs, and the theoretical importance of measuring two forms of power motivation.
Few people would argue that both power and action are important to United States President George W. Bush. Evidence of his action abounds. President Bush leads an administration that has seized opportunities for action on the national stage, helping enact a significant tax cut, assisting in the creation of a number of faith-based initiatives, even considering amending the U.S. constitution to prevent same-sex marriages. In addition, his administration has boldly asserted itself in the international theaters of global warming and war, rejecting the Kyoto treaty and removing dictatorial regimes from power in Afghanistan and Iraq. To what extent President Bush is motivated by power relative to other people, especially other presidents, is less well understood. Among the select group of 43 people who have held the executive office of the U.S. government, President Bush is more motivated by power than most (Winter, 2002). By understanding whether or not there is a correspondence between power motivation and action, political observers might be in a position to predict how much action leaders will take toward their objectives and goals and thus anticipate the changes that will occur during their tenure.
In this article, I investigate the hypothesis that the power motive and action are positively related through an archival analysis of U.S. presidents' power motives and their levels of action-orientation while in office as well as an experimental examination of the relationship between prosocial and antisocial forms of power motivation and action-orientation in a health-care decision with the goal of saving lives.
The Power Motive
The power motive is one in a larger class of human motives, which are defined as desires to bring about or prevent psychological states in the self or others (Peters, 1958; Winter et al., 1998), and they explain why people engage in certain types of goal-directed behavior (McClelland, 1985). Motives vary in the degree to which they are implicit or explicit (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989). People are not aware of their implicit motives, so they can only be measured through indirect measures, such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943) or coding running text written by the individual being studied (Winter, 1991). Explicit, or self-attributed, motives are motives for which people have some degree of awareness, such that they can be measured through self-report questions asking directly about a particular goal or way of acting that the respondent desires to achieve. Implicit motives tend to predict behavior over the lifespan, whereas explicit motives tend to predict behavior immediately following measurement (McClelland et al., 1989; Spangler, 1992).
The power motive is the desire to have impact on others' behavior and emotions as well as a concern with prestige and reputation (Winter, 1973; Winter, 1992). Like any motive, the power motive is a chronic feature of individuals' dispositions, which could manifest itself in observable behavior across a long period of time; however, features of a particular situation also could arouse the power motive, which, in turn, could elicit immediate behavior in that situation (Winter, 1996, pp. 33-34).
A long list of behavior and outcomes is associated with the power motive (Langner & Winter, 2001; McAdams, 1982; McAdams, Healy, & Krause, 1984; Winter, 1973; for a review, see Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, & Duncan, 1998). For example, individuals with high power motivation tend to end up in positions of greater prestige in the groups and organizations they join compared to individuals with low power motivation (McClelland & Boyatzis, 1982; Winter, 1973). Power motivation is also positively associated with extreme risk taking (McClelland & Watson, 1973), and, for U.S. presidents, engagement in war (Winter, 1987). These findings suggest that the power motive is associated not only with behaviors that impact others but also with behaviors that are highly visible to others (see also Winter & Stewart, 1978). The present research is concerned with the association between the power motive and action-oriented behavior.
Action-Orientation
The construct action-orientation draws on a model of action phases that describes aspects of decision-making and the choice and pursuit of goals (Gollwitzer & Moskowitz, 1996; Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987). Before any action is taken, according to this model, one must choose a goal from a selection of many potential goals, in a predecisional phase of deliberation (Gollwitzer, 1990). In this phase, one weighs the pros and cons of different goals before choosing one goal to pursue. After selecting a goal, one begins the postdecisional phase, implementation, which involves carrying out the actions that are ultimately necessary to reach the chosen goal (Gollwitzer, 1990).[1] People can show varying degrees of action-orientation based on the extent to which their behavior is characterized by deliberation and implementation.
Action-orientation can be measured at a situation-specific level by examining each individual's decision-making and behavior with respect to the same situation. People who are more action-oriented are less deliberative and more active as they take steps to implement their chosen goal. According to this model, those who choose to change the status quo must complete actions to reach that goal and, thus, select a more implemental (i.e., action-oriented) response compared to those who decide to let the status quo remain. One can compare individuals at a more general level across multiple situations as well. At the general level, individuals who take action to complete a greater number of goals, or those who are more active in their jobs, are more action-oriented than individuals who are more deliberative or who are less active in their jobs.
Power, the Power Motive, and Action-Orientation
Across social situations, individuals' power rises and falls depending on their interaction partners (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Those with more power in an interaction tend to interpret the situation in terms of reward rather than threat (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002; Zander & Forward, 1968). For example, high-power individuals are more likely than are low-power individuals to think that others like them rather than believe that others are angry with them (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002). These findings are consistent with the theory that social power temporarily activates the behavioral approach system (BAS) (Keltner et al., 2003). This is the mechanism that Galinsky, Gruenfeld, and Magee (2003) hypothesized led to heightened amounts of action-oriented behavior exhibited by individuals with power in a series of studies. They found that high-power individuals were more likely to take action in a risky situation and when it was unclear whether action was allowed than were low-power individuals (Galinsky et al., 2003, Experiments 1 & 2). Even when both high- and low-power individuals took action, high-power individuals' actions tended to be more profound. When presented with an opportunity to take from a common social resource, individuals high in power took more, and when given a chance to give to a public good, they contributed more than individuals low in power (Galinsky et al., 2003, Experiment 3).
In contrast to the temporary psychological state of having social power, the strength of an individual's motivation to reach that state, or power motivation, is relatively stable over time. Rather than having a situation-specific capacity to provide or withhold resources or mete out punishments, as one has with social power (Keltner et al., 2003), with power motivation one has an unflappable desire to gain that capacity (Winter, 1973). Once one obtains power, the result is freedom from dependence on others for resources (Emerson, 1962) and psychological and behavioral control over others (Fiske, 1993). It is this end-state, the possession of and experience of having social power, irrespective of individual motivation, that has been found to lead to a tendency toward less deliberation (Magee, Gruenfeld, Keltner, & Galinsky, in press) and more action (Galinsky et al., 2003).
But is the motivation for power, not just power itself, also connected to action-orientation? There is evidence of an association between the power motive and certain kinds of deviant behavior: high-power motive individuals tend to engage in more profligate, impulsive, and risk seeking behaviors than low-power motive individuals (McClelland, 1975; McClelland & Watson, 1973; Winter, 1973). For example, individuals high in power motivation tend to engage in more acts of aggression and sexual exploitation than individuals low in power motivation (Winter, 1973). These findings are consistent with the notion that the motivation for power activates the BAS; they suggest a focus on rewards in the environment at the expense of attention to potential sources of punishment or loss, a consequence of BAS activation (Gray, 1991). Whereas the power motive studies discussed thus far have investigated the sorts of behavior that are attention-grabbing or even reprehensible, this article tests whether or not power motivation is positively associated with action-oriented thought and behavior of a less conspicuous kind. The first study uses U.S. Presidents as the unit of analysis. In this study, I draw on archival sources to test whether there is a positive correlation between presidential power motivation and action-orientation while in office. The second study is an experiment in which I investigate whether or not different forms of the power motive (prosocial vs. antisocial) are related to a single opportunity for prosocial action.
Study 1: Archival Analysis of U.S. Presidents
The executive office of the U.S. government is one of the most powerful positions in the world, and so it represents an extreme example to investigate the hypothesis that people with greater desire for power will take more action than will people with less desire for power. The action-orientation of U.S. presidents waxes and wanes with their use of vetoes (Cameron, 2000; McCarty, 1997) and executive orders (Cooper, 2002; Howell, 2003; Mayer, 2001; Mayer & Price, 2002), their decisiveness (Simonton, 1988), and the number of goals they accomplish (Barber, 1972; Eastland, 1992; Maranell, 1970).
The hypothesis that presidents with higher power motivation also express greater action-orientation can be tested using already published data. Donley and Winter (1970) began a tradition of measuring presidents' power motives at the beginning of their terms by analyzing the content of their inaugural addresses for power motive imagery[2], and Barber (1972), Maranell (1970), and Simonton (1988) independently assessed presidents' action-orientation based on their behavior while in office.
These various measures of action-orientation and power motive have been discussed together in relation to ratings of presidential performance (Holmes & Elder, 1989), and some of them have been discussed in relation to each other (e.g., deliberation and power motive, Simonton, 1988; activity and power motive, Winter, 1973); however, they have not been examined empirically under a theoretical framework such as the present analysis. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that presidents with higher power motivation displayed more action-orientation during their administrative terms.
Method
Overview
This study used archival data to assess the relationship between previous ratings of presidential action-orientation and power motive collected by other researchers working independently. The level of analysis was the individual president, with ratings coming from multiple published manuscripts. Researchers developed all measures using expert judges or historical records and archives after each president left office. Due to the different years when each manuscript was published and due to limitations in sources from which each researcher was able to develop their ratings, the sample size for each measure varies. The correlation analyses were conducted on the overlapping sample of presidents who held office between 1789 and 1988 inclusive (Washington - Reagan) for whom ratings on each measure existed. The raw data for each measure are available in Appendix A.
Procedure
Action-orientation. Each president's action-orientation was operationalized in terms of three dependent measures developed by three independent researchers. The measures are described in detail below.
Maranell (1970) averaged the responses of 571 historians who rated each of 33 presidents on an 11-point scale according to the following description: "The approach taken by each president toward his administration, an active approach or a passive approach." The "Maranell Active" scores are based on this sample of 33 presidents (from Washington to L. Johnson, excluding W. Harrison and Garfield who were assassinated; Maranell, 1970, Table 4). I predicted a positive relationship between power motive and this variable.
Barber (1972) categorized 16 presidents as either passive or active (-1 = passive, 1 = active here) himself according to the following question: "How much energy does the man invest in his presidency?" If Barber thought the amount of energy invested by a president was enough to warrant describing him as active, then he was categorized as "active," and if the amount of energy made him seem more passive, he was categorized as "passive." Holmes & Elder (1989) categorized an additional 21 presidents using Barber's question as a guideline and they switched Barber's categorization of 2 presidents (T. Roosevelt and Harding). For 3 presidents, Holmes and Elder categorized behavior exhibited after departing office to avoid capturing self-presentational behavior because, after the publication of Barber's (1972) book, at least one president indicated awareness of Barber's analysis and stated an intention to change his behavior accordingly. I used the categorization reported in Holmes & Elder (1989), but the codes for these 3 presidents were excluded from the present study because I was interested in the effects of the power motive on activity while in office. The "Barber Active" codes are for a sample of 34 presidents (from Washington to Reagan excluding W. Harrison and Garfield; Holmes & Elder, 1989, Tables 4 & 4a). I predicted a positive relationship between the power motive and this variable.