Interpersonal power

This paper applies a feminist post-structural discourse analysis to an excerpt from the DVD release Girls Gone Wild: Finally 18, vol 3 (2007) in order to investigate themes of language and gender, making salient themes of power, normativity, performativity, objectification, infantilization, humor, laughter, and self-disclosure. The study finds that both interlocutors in the scene - interviewer and interviewee - employ gendered language performances for different purposes in accordance with relevant discourses. Notably, the interviewer uses language strategies that masks his superior power.

This paper reports the findings of two studies that assessed the validity and reliability of the Adult Parental Power-Prestige Questionnaire (3PQ), a retrospective self-report measure that was developed to assess adult offsprings’ perceptions of parental power and prestige during childhood. The 3PQ was developed for use in the International Father Acceptance-Rejection Project (IFARP), a cross-cultural research project that aims to assess the influence of perceived parental power-prestige on the associations between father and mother acceptance and offsprings’ psychological adjustment. Interpersonal power refers to a person’s ability to influence the opinions and behaviors of other members of a group; prestige refers to the respect, admiration, and esteem a person attracts from other group members. In Study 1, the 3PQ was administered to 274 university students. Principal components analysis was used to assess the 3PQ’s construct validity. Two components were extracted that corresponded, as expected, to power and prestige. A good level of test-retest reliability was established with a small subset of 27 respondents who retook the 3PQ after 4-6 weeks. In Study 2, the 3PQ was administered to 316 students. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the two-factor solution for power and prestige fitted the data better than a one factor solution. The 3PQ showed good internal reliability-consistency in both studies. The influence of Adult 3PQ scores on correlations between parental acceptance and offspring adjustment suggested that the 3PQ has construct validity. Taken together, these findings suggested that the 3PQ is a valid and reliable measure of parental power-prestige within the UK context, and researchers should examine its validity and reliability in other social and cultural contexts.

Lloyd, Julian (2015): The Validity and Reliability of the Adult Parental Power/Prestige Questionnaire (3PQ). In Márcia Machado, Francisco Machado (Eds.): New Paths for Acceptance: Opening Awareness in Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection. Boca Raton, Florida: Brown Walker Press, pp. 149–.

Past research on gift-giving behaviors has presumed equal and horizontal relationships between givers and receivers; however, in the real world, giver-receiver relationships often vary in their level of power, such as parent-child and boss-employee relationships. However, little is known regarding how the difference in power in the giver-receiver relationship influences people's gift choices. Building on construal level theory, the present research proposes and confirms that differences in interpersonal power between givers and receivers can affect the desirability versus feasibility of gifts, which in turn influences individuals' gift preferences. By highlighting the role of power in the gift-giving/receiving situations, these findings contribute to research on gift-giving, while also providing practical implications.