27th October 2023

Leadership and Types of Social Power

‘There are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept.’ – Ralph Stogdill

Leadership

As highlighted by the quote above, leadership is a constantly evolving area and trying to reach a consensus on a definition of ‘leadership’ is like trying to catch smoke. This constant state of flux likely reflects the changing demands we have as a society from our leaders and, by extension, their followers.

For the purposes of this chapter, we’ll be defining leadership as simply this:

‘Leadership is the ability of a group or individual to lead followers towards a goal.’

Sounds reductive, right? Trust me, once you start including terms like influence, control and power, it gets a whole lot muddier, so let’s stick with this.

Thankfully, for the purposes of the MRCPsych papers, we do not need to engage in a lengthy debate around the merits of each and every definition; we simply need to have a passing familiarity with some of the more established contemporary and historical models.

Let’s begin by looking at a more contemporary distinction:

Transactional vs transformational leadership

It might be easy to look at the previous table and conclude that transformational leadership is inherently better than transactional leadership, but this would be a mistake. Sometimes, you need rapid action to meet a short term goal, in which case a simple transactional style where goals and rewards are outlined clearly will be better suited.

Now let’s quickly look at a more historical leadership model that may crop up in your exams by Lewin (1939):

Autocratic vs Democratic vs Laissez-Faire leadership

Again, certain styles lend themselves better to certain situations, and it is important to appreciate this flexibility.

Now that we have established a working knowledge of leadership models that might appear in your exam, it is worth looking at the concept of power.

Power and influence

What does power mean to you? As a noun, it has several meanings:

• The ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way.
• The capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or a course of events.
• Physical strength and force exerted by someone or something.
• Energy that is produced by mechanical, electrical or other means and used to operate a device.

For the purposes of MRCPsych, we’ll focus on the second bullet point and how it formed the basis of the work by social psychologists French and Raven (1959). They initially described the ‘5 Bases of Social Power’ as follows:

1. Expert power – The power of a person with specialist skills or knowledge.
2. Reward power – The power of a person in a position to provide rewards.
3. Legitimate power – The power held by an individual in an organisation simply by virtue of rank.
4. Referent power – The power held by a person with charisma whom people gravitate towards.
5. Coercive power – The power of a person who has the ability to apply punishments.

Six years later, Raven added a sixth base of social power that is less likely to come up on your exams but definitely has the potential to!

      6. Informational power – This results from a person’s ability to control the information that others need to accomplish something.

Now we touch on the debated area of ‘power vs influence’.

It is often stated that power is ‘The ability to MAKE people do things’ whereas influence is ‘The ability to make people WANT to do things.’

However, this distinction falls into problems when we consider the above work of French and Raven, as their definition of referent power would definitely fall under what constitutes ‘influence’ by most definitions.

It’s best not to get bogged down in the details on this one and simply be aware of the work of Herbert Kelman (1958), a Harvard psychologist who, in a historical paper in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, proposed three broad varieties of social influence.

• Compliance – Responding favourably to a request (implicit or explicit) from another. It is primarily a change of behaviour rather than one of attitude, as one can agree to perform a task without personally agreeing with it. Often, this is done to achieve a reward or avoid a punishment.
• Identification – The changing of attitudes or behaviours to conform to someone that is well-liked or respected by the individual, such as a celebrity or role model.
• Internalisation – Influence is readily accepted intrinsically and extrinsically because it fits with the individual’s own value system, so they are simply ‘doing what they think is right.’

Obedience vs conformity

It is important for the college exams to be able to differentiate between conformity and obedience.

• Conformity – No explicit instructions are given, but peer influence and social pressure influences one to perform a certain task.
• Obedience – Explicit instructions are given from a position of authority, and the implicit or explicit threat of punishment influences one to perform a certain task.

The above distinction is the majority of what you need to remember, but the table below outlines more of the differences for reference:

In the next topic, ‘Group Behaviour’, we will explore some of the more notable examples of some of these principles in action, which recurrently feature in MRCPsych exams.

References

• Stogdill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of leadership: A survey of theory and research. New York: Free Press.
• Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O. and Weber, T. J. (2009). ‘Leadership: current theories, research, and future directions’. Annual Review of Psychology. 60: 421-49.
• K. Lewin. (1939). Field Theory and Experiment in Social Psychology: Concepts and Methods. American Journal of Psychology. 44:6. 868-896.
• French, J. & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. Studies in social power. Univer. Michigan.