Eftychia Stamkou

Breaking the Rules to Rise to Power: How Norm Violators Gain Power in the Eyes of Others

Powerful people often act at will, even if the resulting behavior is inappropriate—hence the famous proverb “power corrupts.” Here, we introduce the reverse phenomenon—violating norms signals power. Violating a norm implies that one has the power to act according to one’s own volition in spite of situational constraints, which fuels perceptions of power. Four studies support this hypothesis. Individuals who took coffee from another person’s can (Study 1), violated rules of bookkeeping (Study 2), dropped cigarette ashes on the floor (Study 3), or put their feet on the table (Study 4) were perceived as more powerful than individuals who did not show such behaviors. The effect was mediated by inferences of volitional capacity, and it replicated across different methods (scenario, film clip, face-to-face interaction), different norm violations, and different indices of power (explicit measures, expected emotions, and approach/inhibition tendencies). Implications for power, morality, and social hierarchy are discussed.

Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.

Are the Powerful Really Blind to the Feelings of Others? How Hierarchical Concerns Shape Attention to Emotions

Paying attention to others’ emotions is essential to successful social interactions. Integrating social-functional approaches to emotion with theorizing on the reciprocal nature of power, we propose that attention to others’ emotions depends on concerns over one’s power position and the social signal conveyed by the emotion. Others’ anger signals attack—information relevant to high-power individuals who are concerned about the legitimacy or suitability of their position. On the contrary, others’ fear signals vulnerability—information relevant to low-power individuals who are concerned about their unfair treatment within an illegitimate hierarchy. Accordingly, when power roles were illegitimately assigned or mismatched with one’s trait power, leaders were faster at detecting the appearance of anger (Studies 1 and 2), slower at judging the disappearance of anger (Study 2), and more accurate in recognizing subordinates’ anger, whereas subordinates were more accurate in recognizing leaders’ fear (Study 3). Implications for theorizing about emotion and social hierarchy are discussed.

How norm violations shape social hierarchies: Those who stand on top block norm violators from rising up

Norm violations engender both negative reactions and perceptions of power from observers. We addressed this paradox by examining whether observers’ tendency to grant power to norm followers versus norm violators is moderated by the observer’s position in the hierarchy. Because norm violations threaten the status quo, we hypothesized that individuals higher in a hierarchy (high verticality) would be less likely to grant power to norm violators compared to individuals lower in the hierarchy (low verticality). In 14 studies (Ntotal = 1,704), we measured participants’ trait verticality (sense of power, socioeconomic status, testosterone) and manipulated state verticality (power position, status, dominance). A meta-analysis revealed that higher ranked participants granted less power to norm violators than lower ranked individuals, presumably because the former support social stratification. Interestingly, these effects occurred for trait but not state verticality. Overall, negative reactions to deviants may be driven by hierarchy-maintenance motives by those in privileged positions.

When is a lie acceptable? Work and private life lying acceptance depends on its beneficiary

ABSTRACT In this article we show that when analyzing attitude towards lying in a cross-cultural setting, both the beneficiary of the lie (self vs other) and the context (private life vs. professional domain) should be considered. In a study conducted in Estonia, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden (N = 1345), in which participants evaluated stories presenting various types of lies, we found usefulness of relying on the dimensions. Results showed that in the joint sample the most acceptable were other-oriented lies concerning private life, then other-oriented lies in the professional domain, followed by egoistic lies in the professional domain; and the least acceptance was shown for egoistic lies regarding one’s private life. We found a negative correlation between acceptance of a behavior and the evaluation of its deceitfulness.

Marital Satisfaction, Sex, Age, Marriage Duration, Religion, Number of Children, Economic Status, Education, and Collectivistic Values: Data from 33 Countries

Forms of committed relationships, including formal marriage arrangements between men and women, exist in almost every culture (Bell, 1997). Yet, similarly to many other psychological constructs (Henrich et al., 2010), marital satisfaction and its correlates have been investigated almost exclusively in Western countries (e.g., Bradbury et al., 2000). Meanwhile, marital relationships are heavily guided by culturally determined norms, customs, and expectations (for review see Berscheid, 1995; Fiske et al., 1998). While we acknowledge the differences existing both between- and within-cultures, we measured marital satisfaction and several factors that might potentially correlate with it based on self-report data from individuals across 33 countries. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the raw data available for anybody interested in further examining any relations between them and other country-level scores obtained elsewhere. Below, we review the central variables that are likely to be related to marital satisfaction. Gender Gender has long been identified in the literature as a predictor of marital satisfaction (Bernard, 1972). Specifically, early works suggested that men report being more satisfied with their marriages compared to women in both Western (e.g., Schumm et al., 1998) and non-Western (e.g., Rostami et al., 2014) cultures. However, sex differences in marital satisfaction may differ across cultures due to traditional sex roles (Pardo et al., 2012) and larger-scale cultural variables, such as sex egalitarianism (Taniguchi and Kaufman, 2013).

The art of influence: When and why deviant artists gain impact

Some artists rise to fame, while others sink into oblivion. What determines whether artists make an impact? Considering deviance in its sociohistorical context, we propose that artists whose work deviates from their own previous style (intrapersonal deviance) and other artists’ styles (interpersonal deviance) gain greater impact than nondeviant artists, as long as deviance is directed toward a progressive style. A preliminary study showed that in western cultures nonrealistic styles are considered more progressive than realistic styles (Study 1). Five more studies provide evidence for the effects of the two types of artistic deviance on several aspects of impact (i.e., perceived influence of the artist, valuation of the artwork, and visual attention to the artwork). First, individuals considered artists who deviated from their previous style more impactful than artists who consistently followed a single style (Study 2), effects that were stronger when artists transitioned from a retrogressive style to a progressive one (Study 3). Second, artists who deviated from their contemporaries’ style were considered more impactful than artists who followed the predominant style, effects that were stronger when artists strayed from a predominant retrogressive style by using progressive means of expression (Studies 4 and 5). When the historical context prevented observers from inferring the progressiveness of the deviant artists’ expressive means, artistic deviance enhanced perceived impact regardless of the means by which the artists deviated (Study 6). Supporting our theoretical model, the effects of intrapersonal and interpersonal deviance on impact were mediated by perceived will-power (Studies 3, 5, and 6).

Global Study of Social Odor Awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.

Corrigendum: Marital satisfaction, sex, age, marriage duration, religion, number of children, economic status, education, and collectivistic values: Data from 33 countries [Front. Psychol., 8, (2017) (1199)] DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01199

[This corrects the article on p. 1199 in vol. 8, PMID: 28785230.].