How Power And Self-focus Determine The Effectiveness Of Peer Influence In Cooperation Decision Making

In this research, we examine when and why organizational environments influence how employees respond to cooperation issues. Past research has proposed that social influences in organizations affect employees’ cooperation decision making, but has not explained when and why some individuals are affected by an organizational environment and some disregard it. To address this problem, we drew on research on power to propose that power makes people more self-focused, which, in turn, makes them more likely to act upon their preferences and ignore peer influences.In Study 1, one-way ANOVA found that peer influence has a significant affect on cooperation decision making, no matter peer’s cooperation or noncooperation decision making.In Study 2, using two factors (2×3) experimental design and moderated path analysis, found that, relative to the control group, participants primed with high power conformed less to others’ responses when responding to an ambiguous cooperation dilemma. Participants primed with low power, in contrast, conformed more than the control group. Private self-focus mediated the moderating effect of power on the effect of peer influence.Study 3 provided a more rigorous test of the hypothesized psychological mechanism by manipulating private self-focus directly. We found that power (this time structurally manipulated) reduced the effect of peer influence for participants in the experimental control condition, but when participants’ private self-focus was experimentally heightened, the effect of power disappeared, indicating that the effect of power depends on its ability to heighten a decision maker’s private self-focus.We have shown that private self-focus caused by power explains when and why employees disregard their organizational environment and instead follow their own (non)cooperation preferences. These findings are important for understanding various cooperation and noncooperation social processes in organizations—from peer influence to social rules—and thus contribute to an integrated and more contextualized understanding of cooperation decision making.