Intimate

Relationships

Rowland S.Miller

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C H A P T E R 12

Power and Violence

Power and Interdependence

◆ Violence in Relationships ◆ For Your Consideration

◆ Chapter Summary

Who calls the shots in your relationship? Do you usually get your way? Or do you and your partner trade the lead with each of you getting some of what you want? Most people say that an ideal relationship would be an equal partnership, with both partners sharing the ability to make important deci- sions and to influence one another; at the turn of the century, for instance, 90 percent of young women and 87 percent of young men said they believed that dating partners should have “exactly equal say” in the relationship (Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). In addition, people clearly prefer friend- ships in which the partners share similar amounts of power to friendships in which one of the partners is typically the boss (Veniegas & Peplau, 1997). This may not seem surprising, but this preference for sharing power is an enormous departure from the traditional model endorsed by previous gen- erations, in which men were the dominant partners in heterosexual relation- ships, making all the important decisions and calling all the shots. These days, few people explicitly announce that they want to emulate this old-fashioned model, but figuring out how to achieve equality in a relationship can be much more complicated than it sounds. How should decision making work in an egalitarian relationship? Should the partners make all decisions together? Or does each partner take responsibility for making exactly half the decisions? Does it matter which decisions are important and which ones aren’t? Endors- ing equality in a relationship is a simple matter, but making it a reality is a much greater challenge.

This chapter will explore the ways in which social power operates in intimate relationships. Social power is the ability to influence the behavior of others and to resist their influence on us (Huston, 2002). I’ll identify some of the influences on power in relationships and consider the consequences of power for individuals and couples. Some of them, unfortunately, can be unpleasant.

12.1 POWER AND INTERDEPENDENCE

There are different ways to analyze social power, but the most widely adopted perspective is that of interdependence theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), which we examined in chapter 6. In this first half of the chapter, I’ll use interdepen- dency ideas to describe the bases on which power is built, the processes by which power is wielded, and the outcomes that are produced by its use.

Sources of Power

From an interdependency perspective, power is based on the control of valu- able resources. If I control access to something you want, you’ll probably be motivated to comply with my wishes (within reason) so that I’ll let you get it. I’ll then have power over you; I’ll be able to get you to do what I want, at least for a while. This is a simple idea, but (as you might expect) there are various subtleties involved in this view of social power.

First, the person who has power does not have to possess the desired resources; it is enough that he or she controls access to them. Imagine that you’re shopping with a friend at a flea market and you discover the rare imported bootleg concert DVD that you’ve wanted for months, but that you keep losing to higher bidders on eBay. Better yet, it’s cheap, but you don’t have enough cash with you, and you need a loan from your friend to buy the elu- sive disc. Your friend doesn’t have the object you desire, but his or her power in this situation will come from controlling your ability to get it. In a similar fashion, relationship partners can control our access to valuable interpersonal rewards—such as physical affection—and thereby have power over us.

Of course, one derives power from controlling a resource only if other peo- ple want it, and the greater their need or desire, the greater one’s power. The example of the rare DVD is an illustration of this: If you have only a mild inter- est in the disc, a friend with the money to buy it has only a little power over you. But if you want the disc desperately, your friend has more power and will be able to ask for a sizable favor in return. Whenever we want something badly (be it a rare DVD or interpersonal intimacy) and believe we cannot get it elsewhere, the person who has what we want is able to exert control over us.

We encountered an example of one person’s desire fueling another person’s power back in the box on page 183. The principle of lesser interest holds that in any partnership, the person who has less interest in continuing and maintain- ing the relationship has more power in that partnership (Waller & Hill, 1951). If your partner loves and needs you more than you love him or her, you’ll get to do what you want more often than not. This sounds cold blooded, but it’s true; in romantic relationships, the partner who is less committed to the relationship usually has more power (Lennon et al., 2013). I mentioned another example of this pattern in chapter 9 when I noted that men desire more sex, on average, than women do. Men’s greater interest in sex gives women power; it’s quite unro- mantic but rather enlightening to think of sex as a valuable resource that women can exchange for various benefits from men (Kruger, 2008). This arrangement is explicit in the case of prostitution when women trade sex for money, but it often also operates in more subtle ways in many romantic relationships. It’s not uncommon, for instance, for a woman to wait for a declaration of affection and emerging commitment from a man before allowing him access to sex.

Of course, if something we want is readily available elsewhere, we can just go there to get it, and the availability of alternative sources of desired resources is another critical factor in an interdependency perspective on power. If there is another friend at the flea market who can lend you the money you need, the first friend has less power over you. And if there are many people who would loan you the money, then you are not very dependent on any one of them, and not one of them has much power over you at all.

In the same fashion, the availability of alternatives influences the balance of power in an intimate relationship. Those with few alternatives to their existing partnerships (who therefore have low CLalts) will be more dependent on their relationships than will those with many other other potential partners (who thereby have high CLalts). And as we have just seen, being more dependent means having less power. If one partner has few alternatives and the other has many, there will be a larger imbalance of power than would be the case if they needed each other to similar degrees (Lennon et al., 2013).

In fact, differences in available alternatives may be one reason that men are typically more powerful than women in traditional marriages. When husbands work outside the home and their wives do not, they often have higher CLalts for at least two important reasons. First, they may encounter larger numbers of other potential partners, and second, they’re more likely to have the money to pursue them if they wish. In contrast, stay-at-home wives may not meet many other interesting men, and even if they do, they’re likely to be economically dependent on their husbands, having little money of their own. Thus, the bal- ance of power in a marriage sometimes changes when a wife enters the work force and gains new friends and money of her own (Fitch & Ruggles, 2000).

There are two more points to make about the interdependence perspective on power. First, interdependence theory recognizes two different broad types of power. On occasion, one can control a partner’s outcomes no matter what the partner does; in such cases, one has a form of power known as fate control: One can autocratically determine what outcomes a partner receives, thereby controlling the other’s fate. When she is his only option, a woman who refuses to have sex with her husband is exercising fate control; she can unilaterally determine whether or not sex occurs. A second, more subtle, type of power is behavior control. This occurs when, by changing one’s own behavior, one encourages a partner to alter his or her actions in a desirable direction, too. If a woman offers to provide a special backrub if her partner cleans the garage, she’s engaging in behavior control.

Of course, in almost all relationships, both partners have power over each other, and the last, and perhaps most essential, point of an interdependency perspective is that the interactions of two partners emerge from their mutual influence on one another. One partner’s power over the other may be matched by the other’s counterpower over the one, so that both partners are able to get each other to do what they want some of the time. For instance, a woman may have fate control over whether or not her husband has sex, but he probably has some behavior control over her in return; by cajoling her, pleasing her, or worse, threatening her, he may be able to get her to do what he wants. Two partners’ abilities to influence one another may be diverse and variable, being strong in some situations and weak in others, but both of them will routinely have some control over what the other does.

Types of Resources

So, power is based on the resources we control—but what kinds of resources are involved? Table 12.1 lists six bases of power first identified by French and Raven (1959); this scheme has been applied to all kinds of interactions, including those that occur in intimate relationships. The first two types, reward power and coercive power, refer to a person’s ability to bestow various rewards and punish- ments on someone else. The benefits and costs involved can be physical or mate- rial goods, such as a pleasant gift or a painful slap, or intangible, interpersonal gains and losses, such as reassuring approval or hurtful disdain (Raven, 2001). For example, if a husband craves a shoulder massage from his wife, she has reward power over him: She can rub his back or not, supplying or withholding a physical reward. But in return, he may have coercion power over her: If he doesn’t get his massage, he may sulk and be less affectionate, imposing intangible costs.

The capabilities to provide desired benefits or to impose aversive costs on our partners are very important and very influential, but there are other ways to influence people, too. Legitimate power exists when our partners believe that we have a reasonable right to tell them what to do, and they have an obligation to comply. In some cultures, for instance, a husband really is thought to be the boss, and a wife is supposed not only to love and honor him, but to obey him as well, doing whatever he asks. This form of legitimate power comes from being in a position of authority, but potent social norms can also impart legitimate power to requests that come from anyone (Raven, 2001). For instance, the norm of reciprocity encourages us to do unto others as they have done unto us, and if someone who has already done you a favor asks for some kindness in return, the norm obligates you to repay the good deed. Equity is also normative, and if your partner has done extra housework lately, an invitation to fold some laun- dry might be difficult to decline. Finally, a norm of social responsibility urges us to be generous to those who depend on us—to help those who cannot help themselves—and if your partner is sick in bed with the flu, a request for some juice may be hard to turn down. Any of these norms can impart power to a partner’s desires, making them very influential, at least temporarily.4

We have referent power over our partners when they adore us and wish to do what we want because they feel connected to us. Our wishes may change our partners’ preferences about what they want to do when they love us and want to stay close to us. Expert power exists when our partners recognize our superior knowledge and experience and are influenced by us because we know more than they do. When a wife is a better cook than her husband, for instance, he’ll often follow her advice and instructions without question when it’s his turn to prepare dinner. Finally, we have informational power when we have specific pieces of information that influence our partners’ behavior; our part- ners may do what we want if we offer to share a juicy bit of gossip with them.

Men, Women, and the Control of Resources

How are these resources used in your relationships? What goes on between you and your partner is largely up to both of you, but you may be influenced to a greater extent than you realize by the broad cultural patterns that sur- round you. Many of us applaud the notion of equal partnerships but still con- duct relationships in which “there is an imbalance of power, with one person making more decisions, controlling more of the joint activities and resources, winning more arguments and, in general, being in a position of dominance” (Impett & Peplau, 2006, p. 283). And in most heterosexual relationships, the dominant partner is the man. Indeed, this isn’t good news for most of us (but perhaps it really isn’t news at all): “In no known societies do women domi- nate men. In all societies that accumulate wealth, men, on average, enjoy more power than women, on average, and this appears to have been true throughout human history” (Pratto & Walker, 2004, p. 242). Heterosexual couples who seek to share power equally are swimming upstream against long-standing tradi- tion, and there are three reasons for this.

First, men and women generally face a disparity in relative resources. Men get paid more than women for the work they do (even when it’s the same work): In the United States, women with full-time jobs presently earn only 84 percent as much as men do (Pew Research, 2014b). Men are also far more likely to hold the reins of governmental, judicial, and corporate power; in 2014, for instance, only 19 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress were women (Manning, 2014), and, even worse, only 5 percent of the chief executive officers of America’s 500 largest companies were women (“Women CEOs,” 2014). Money and status confer reward power and legitimate power on those who possess them, and men often have more of both than women do. Indeed, it’s much more common for wives to earn more than their husbands than it used to be, but in about two-thirds of American marriages, he still makes more money than she does (Pew Research Center, 2013a). And money is a source of power that can be used more flexibly than most other resources. Theorists describe some resources (such as money) as universalistic and others (such as love) as particularistic (Foa et al., 1993). Universalistic resources can be exchanged with almost anyone in a wide variety of situations, and whoever controls them has considerable free- dom in deciding what to do with them (and with whom to do it). Particularistic resources are valuable in some situations but not in others, and they may confer power to their owner only with particular partners. A partner’s love for you may give you referent power over him or her and no one else whereas a large pile of cash may provide you reward power over almost everyone you meet.

The second reason equality is hard to attain is related to the first: Social norms support and maintain male dominance. Worldwide, most cultures are still governed by a norm of patriarchy that confers higher levels of expert and legitimate power on men than on women (Carli, 2001). Americans actually tend to think that women have skills that should make them more effective leaders than men; women are thought to be more honest, intelligent, compassionate, and creative and just as ambitious and hardworking as men (“Men or Women,” 2008). But legitimate power still seems “unladylike” to some people, and when a woman seeks political office, the fact that she’s seeking power undermines her appeal to voters; a man seeking office pays no such penalty (Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010). And if a woman does attain a position of leadership, she’s likely to be evaluated more harshly than a man would be when she straightforwardly tells others what to do (Rudman et al., 2012). Cultural norms still keep women in their place, so Americans tend to prefer that their surgeons, lawyers, and airline pilots be men rather than women (Morin & Cohn, 2008). Women are preferred as elementary school teachers.

Thus, cultural tradition suggests that it’s ordinary and natural for men to make more money and to be in charge most of the time. And that underlies the third reason equality is elusive: We’re not sure what it looks like. Women usually get their way when it comes to decisions regarding household matters and the kids, and they get to pick the things the couple does on the weekend more often than men do (Shu et al., 2012). So, women can rightly feel that they’re influential at home. But just how much? Married Americans still report that wives buy most of the groceries, fix most of the meals, and wash most of the dishes; they also do