Dominance and Prestige as Self-Concept Facets

Abstract

Two basic strategies can be applied to navigate hierarchies: (a) dominance, which involves the induction of fear, intimidation, or coercion to obtain status, or (b) prestige, which involves using one’s skills, knowledge, or expertise to pursue status. In the present research, we refined the original dominance and prestige account and the respective self-report scale and conceptualized and assessed both variables as stable self-concept facets. By doing so, we extended the explanatory power of the model. Four studies (total N = 1,993) showed good psychometric properties for the newly developed dominance and prestige questionnaire (DPQ). Both dominance and prestige showed high temporal stability. In testing associations with 72 personality variables and 14 objective criteria, nomological and criterion validity were supported. For the first time, the concepts were shown to predict friendship satisfaction. Further, in testing a truth and bias model, we found high self-other agreement for both self-concept facets. Thus, self-perceptions of dominance and prestige proved to be stable, valid, accurate, and relevant in contexts beyond leadership. Future research concerning the self-perception of these concepts could test the relevance of dominance and prestige in additional spheres of life (e.g. families, academia).

Disclosure Statement

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all participants who were included in the study.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Preregistered through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/mxjw9/ and https://osf.io/mxjw9/. To obtain the author’s disclosure form, please contact the Editor.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Jane Zagorski for language editing.

Notes

1 Various research assistants distributed the questionnaire, and participants were allowed to further distribute the questionnaire.

2 For the KMO, the proportion of variance shared by all items is determined and divided by the proportion of variance shared by all items plus the sum of the squared partial correlation coefficients. Thus, it reflects whether partial correlations between items are small (the smaller they are, the larger the KMO is).

3 MSA coefficients are computed in the same way as the KMO value, but they refer to the sample adequacy of single items (and not the full correlation matrix).

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly funded by a graduate scholarship granted by the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, to Robert Körner. The source of funding had no involvement in the study design, data analysis, interpretation of data, writing, or decision to submit.