Fight the power: comparing and evaluating two measures of French and Raven’s bases of social power
Wood, J
Abstract
Social power, or potential for social influence, has traditionally been conceptualized according to French and Raven’s (1959) power typology. The purpose of this analysis was to examine the relationship between a commonly used scale measuring the original 5-factor model and a more recently developed scale measuring the revised 11-factor model, and evaluate the predictive utility of each. Correlations between corresponding bases on the two scales were weak, suggesting a lack of convergent validity. In addition, the 5-factor scale accounted for a substantially greater proportion of variance than did the 11-factor scale when predicting global power.