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Feb, 2024;3 (2): pgae025.

Are many sex/gender differences really power differences?

Adam D Galinsky, Aurora Turek, Grusha Agarwal, Eric M Anicich, Derek D Rucker, Hannah R Bowles, Nira Liberman, Chloe Levin, Joe C Magee
Author Information
  1. Adam D Galinsky: Management Division, Columbia University, New York City, NY 10027, USA. ORCID
  2. Aurora Turek: Organizational Behavior Unit, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163, USA. ORCID
  3. Grusha Agarwal: Organizational Behaviour & Human Resource Management Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5T 1P5, Canada.
  4. Eric M Anicich: Management & Organization Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA. ORCID
  5. Derek D Rucker: Marketing Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. ORCID
  6. Hannah R Bowles: Organizational Behavior Unit, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163, USA.
  7. Nira Liberman: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel. ORCID
  8. Chloe Levin: Management Division, Columbia University, New York City, NY 10027, USA.
  9. Joe C Magee: Management & Organizations Department, New York University, New York City, NY 10012, USA. ORCID
PMID: 38415218 DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae025

Abstract

This research addresses the long-standing debate about the determinants of sex/gender differences. Evolutionary theorists trace many sex/gender differences back to natural selection and sex-specific adaptations. Sociocultural and biosocial theorists, in contrast, emphasize how societal roles and social power contribute to sex/gender differences beyond any biological distinctions. By connecting two empirical advances over the past two decades-6-fold increases in sex/gender difference meta-analyses and in experiments conducted on the psychological effects of power-the current research offers a novel empirical examination of whether power differences play an explanatory role in sex/gender differences. Our analyses assessed whether experimental manipulations of power and sex/gender differences produce similar psychological and behavioral effects. We first identified 59 findings from published experiments on power. We then conducted a -curve of the experimental power literature and established that it contained evidential value. We next subsumed these effects of power into 11 broad categories and compared them to 102 similar meta-analytic sex/gender differences. We found that high-power individuals and men generally display higher agency, lower communion, more positive self-evaluations, and similar cognitive processes. Overall, 71% (72/102) of the sex/gender differences were consistent with the effects of experimental power differences, whereas only 8% (8/102) were opposite, representing a 9:1 ratio of consistent-to-inconsistent effects. We also tested for discriminant validity by analyzing whether power corresponds more strongly to sex/gender differences than extraversion: although extraversion correlates with power, it has different relationships with sex/gender differences. These results offer novel evidence that many sex/gender differences may be explained, in part, by power differences.

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