Environmental and personality determinants of adolescents' evaluations of rewarding, neutral, and punishing power figures.

Abstract

Within the present research framework, some important determinants of an individual's responses to various types or power figures have been studied. On the basis of the Lewinian thesis that individual behavior is a product or the interaction between environmental and personality determinants, both these classes of variables were included in the investigation.

In the present research, power was defined as the ability of one person to reward or punish another person in a particular situation. However, it was theorized that the specific type of power possessed by a given power figure, i.e., power to reward or power to punish, would influence an individual's responses to that power figure. [TRUNCATED]