‘I Am the Best’: Effects of Influence Tactics and Power Bases on Powerholders’ Self-Evaluation and Target Evaluation

Abstract

Influencing others by using harsh tactics is more likely to violate justice norms than influencing by using soft tactics. Therefore, powerholders are supposed to enhance the self and devalue the targets more to justify harsh influence tactics. These social re-evaluations should also be more likely after influencing with tactics that are incongruent with the powerholders’ power base (e.g. harsh tactics based on expert power or soft tactics based on position power). In two experiments with 61 interacting groups, one person in each group was presented as having expert versus position power and instructed to influence by using harsh versus by soft tactics. As expected, powerholders who influenced by harsh versus soft tactics enhanced self-evaluation (experiment 1) and reduced target evaluation (experiment 2), and powerholders who influenced by incongruent tactics enhanced self-evaluation (both experiments).