In the experiments reported here, we integrated work on hierarchy, culture, and the enforcement of group cooperation by examining patterns of punishment. Studies in Western contexts have shown that having high status can temper acts of dominance, suggesting that high status may decrease punishment by the powerful. We predicted that high status would have the opposite effect in Asian cultures because vertical collectivism permits the use of dominance to reinforce the existing hierarchical order. Across two experiments, having high status decreased punishment by American participants but increased punishment by Chinese and Indian participants. Moreover, within each culture, the effect of status on punishment was mediated by feelings of being respected. A final experiment found differential effects of status on punishment imposed by Asian Americans depending on whether their Asian or American identity was activated. Analyzing enforcement through the lens of hierarchy and culture adds insight into the vexing puzzle of when and why people engage in punishment.
AndersonC.AmesD. R.GoslingS. D. (2008). Punishing hubris: The perils of overestimating one’s status in a group. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 90–101.
2.
AndersonC.BerdahlJ. L. (2002). The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1362–1377.
3.
AshleyR.BallS.EckelC. (2010). Motives for giving: A reanalysis of two classic public goods experiments. Southern Economic Journal, 77, 15–26.
4.
AxelrodR. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York, NY: Basic Books.
5.
BaldassarriD.GrossmanG. (2011). Centralized sanctioning and legitimate authority promote cooperation in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 108, 11023–11027.
6.
BladerS. L.ChenY.-R. (2012). Differentiating the effects of status and power: A justice perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 994–1014.
7.
BowlesH. R.GelfandM. (2010). Status and the evaluation of workplace deviance. Psychological Science, 21, 49–54.
8.
CarpenterJ.MatthewsP. (2009). What norms trigger punishment?Experimental Economics, 12, 272–288.
9.
ChenS.WellandJ. (2002). Examining the effects of power as a function of self-construals and gender. Self and Identity, 1, 251–269.
10.
ChengJ. T.TracyJ. L.FoulshamT.KingstoneA.HenrichJ. (2013). Two ways to the top: Evidence that dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable avenues to social rank and influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 103–125.
11.
de QuervainD. J. F.FischbacherU.TreyerV.SchellhammerM.SchnyderU.BuckA.FehrE. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305, 1254–1258.
12.
DuboisD.RuckerD. D.GalinskyA. D. (2015). Social class, power, and selfishness: When and why upper and lower class individuals behave unethically. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 436–449.
13.
FastN. J.ChenS. (2009). When the boss feels inadequate: Power, incompetence, and aggression. Psychological Science, 20, 1406–1413.
14.
FastN. J.HalevyN.GalinskyA. D. (2012). The destructive nature of power without status. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 391–394.
15.
FehrE.FischbacherU. (2004). Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution & Human Behavior, 25, 63–87.
16.
FehrE.GächterS. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review, 90, 980–994.
17.
FehrE.GächterS. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137–140.
18.
FischbacherU.GächterS.FehrE. (2001). Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters, 71, 397–404.
19.
GalinskyA. D.MageeJ. C.InesiM. E.GruenfeldD. H. (2006). Power and perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17, 1068–1074.
20.
GruenfeldD. H.InesiM. E.MageeJ. C.GalinskyA. D. (2008). Power and the objectification of social targets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 111–127.
21.
GruenfeldD. H.TiedensL. Z. (2010). Organizational preferences and their consequences. In FiskeS. T.GilbertD. T.LindzeyG. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 1252–1298). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
22.
HalevyN.ChouE. Y.GalinskyA. D.MurnighanJ. K. (2011). When hierarchy wins: Evidence from the National Basketball Association. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 3, 398–406.
23.
HerrmannB.ThöniC.GächterS. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319, 1362–1367.
24.
HirshJ. B.GalinskyA. D.ZhongC.-B. (2011). Drunk, powerful, and in the dark: How general processes of disinhibition produce both prosocial and antisocial behavior. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 415–427.
25.
HofstedeG. H. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
26.
IpP. K. (2009). Is Confucianism good for business ethics in China?Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 463–476.
KipnisD. (1972). Does power corrupt?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 33–41.
29.
KitayamaS.MarkusH. R.MatsumotoH.NorasakkunkitV. (1997). Individual and collective processes in the construction of the self: Self-enhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1245–1267.
30.
LeavittH. J. (2005). Top down: Why hierarchies are here to stay and how to manage them more effectively. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.
31.
LeungK.KochP. T.LuL. (2002). A dualistic model of harmony and its implications for conflict management in Asia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 19, 201–220.
32.
LunV. M.-C. (2012). Harmonizing conflicting views about harmony in Chinese culture. In HuangX.BondM. H. (Eds.), Handbook of Chinese organizational behavior: Integrating theory, research and practice (pp. 467–479). Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar.
33.
MageeJ. C.GalinskyA. D. (2008). Social hierarchy: The self-reinforcing nature of power and status. Academy of Management Annals, 2, 351–398.
34.
MiyamotoY.WilkenB. (2010). Culturally contingent situated cognition: Influencing other people fosters analytic perception in the United States but not in Japan. Psychological Science, 21, 1616–1622.
35.
O’GormanR.HenrichJ.Van VugtM. (2009). Constraining free riding in public goods games: Designated solitary punishers can sustain human cooperation. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276, 323–329.
36.
ParkJ.KitayamaS.MarkusH. R.CoeC. L.MiyamotoY.KarasawaM.. . . RyffC. D. (2013). Social status and anger expression: The cultural moderation hypothesis. Emotion, 13, 1122–1131.
37.
PreacherK. J.RuckerD. D.HayesA. F. (2007). Addressing moderated mediation hypotheses: Theory, methods, and prescriptions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 42, 185–227.
38.
PyeL. W. (1985). Asian power and politics: The cultural dimensions of authority. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
39.
SingelisT. M.TriandisH. C.BhawukD. P.GelfandM. J. (1995). Horizontal and vertical dimensions of individualism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurement refinement. Cross-Cultural Research, 29, 240–275.
40.
TorelliC. J.ShavittS. (2010). Culture and concepts of power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 703–723.
41.
TriandisH. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
42.
TriandisH. C.GelfandM. J. (1998). Converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 118–128.
43.
Van KleefG. A.De DreuC. K. W.PietroniD.MansteadA. S. R. (2006). Power and emotion in negotiation: Power moderates the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness on concession making. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 557–581.
44.
WangC. S.LeungA. K.-y. (2010). The cultural dynamics of rewarding honesty and punishing deception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1529–1542.
45.
WeatherleyR. (2002). Harmony, hierarchy and duty based morality: The Confucian antipathy towards rights. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 12, 245–267.
46.
WigginsJ. S.TrapnellP.PhillipsN. (1988). Psychometric and geometric characteristics of the revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R). Multivariate Behavioral Research, 23, 517–530.
47.
WiltermuthS.FlynnF. (2012). Power, moral clarity, and punishment in the workplace. Academy of Management Journal, 56, 1002–1023.
48.
WuJ.-J.ZhangB.-Y.ZhouZ.-X.HeQ.-Q.ZhengX.-D.CressmanR.TaoY. (2009). Costly punishment does not always increase cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106, 17448–17451.
49.
YamagishiT. (1986). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 110–116.
50.
ZhongC.-B.MageeJ. C.MadduxW. W.GalinskyA. D. (2006). Power, culture, and action: Considerations in the expression and enactment of power in East Asian and Western societies. In SalasE. (Series Ed.) & ChenY.-R. (Vol. Ed.), Research on managing groups and teams: Vol. 9. National culture and groups (pp. 53–73). Bingley, England: Emerald Group.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
