The Role of the Military Rank, Relational Power, and Agentic Power in Happiness of Cadets at the Korea Military Academy

Abstract

The military is one of the most hierarchical organizations in human society. In general, soldiers of lower ranks are motivated to improve their standing by ascending to higher ranks in a hierarchy. This raises a question the current study sought to answer: Does higher military rank beget happiness, if so, why? We propose that a sense of power mediates the relationship between rank and happiness. Previous studies have conceptualized power as two constructs: relational power and agentic power. Relational power is defined as the ability to influence and exercise control over others, which represents a more interdependent aspect. Agentic power is defined as the ability to act for oneself and resist the influence of others, which reflects a more independent characteristic. Given that the military emphasizes interdependent self-view as a member of the military which is collectivistic, we hypothesized that the rank would be more related to relational power than agentic power and consequently the rank would predict happiness via not agentic but relational power. We found the results consistent with our hypothesis, using a sample of cadets at the Korea Military Academy. Implications of the results are discussed for the military.

Keywords:

• Hierarchy
• military rank
• power
• relational power
• agentic power
• happiness
• Korea Military Academy
• cadet
• multiple-mediator model

Notes

1 The distinction between relational power and agentic power is linked to the previous distinction such as social and personal power (e.g., Lammers et al., 2009) and influence and autonomy (Lammers et al., 2016). For example, Lammers et al., (2016) pointed out that they did use the term “influence” and “autonomy” rather than “social power” and “personal power” to avoid creating some confusion (see Lammers et al., 2016, for detail). Although we agreed with their pointing, we use the term “relational power” and “agentic power” to stress the construct of power in that “influence” and “autonomy” do not clearly manifest the construct of power.

2 All measures did not show significant difference between male and female cadets. all ps > .20

3 $k^2,$ the effect size of the indirect effect in mediation analysis (Kelley’s kappa-squared; Preacher & Kelley, 2011) cannot be calculated in the multiple-mediator model with covariates (Preacher & Kelley, 2011). In a simple mediation analysis where relational power was only included as a mediator, not controlling for social class of family, the indirect effect was also significant, b = .46, SE = .12, BCa CI [0.25-0.74], and $k^2$ was .21.