The influence of gender on the likelihood of using soft social power strategies in school consultation

Abstract

AbstractThe social power typology developed originally by French and Raven in 1959 and revised by Raven in 1965 and 1992 was applied to study school consultation. Specifically, we investigated how the gender of school psychologist consultants and teacher consultees influence how likely consultants are to use soft power strategies, identified as those drawing on expert, referent, informational, legitimate dependency, and legitimate position power. A modified version of the Interpersonal Power Inventory was mailed to 1,000 Nationally Certified School Psychologists. Results obtained from 352 respondents indicated that, when consulting with female teachers: (a) male psychologists are more likely to use expert power than the other four soft strategies combined, and (b) female psychologists are less likely to use referent power than the other four soft strategies combined. Findings suggest that consultant gender plays an important role in determining influence strategies used by school consultants. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.