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It's Lonely At The Bottom (Too): The Effects Of Experienced Powerlessness On Social Closeness And Disengagement, Trevor A. Foulk, Irene E. De Pater, Michael Schaerer, Christilene Du Plessis, Randy Lee, Amir Erez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although powerlessness is a pervasive experience for employees, prior social power research has predominantly focused on consequences of powerfulness. This has led to contradictory predictions for how experienced powerlessness influences employees’ social perceptions and behaviors. To resolve this theoretical tension, we build on Social Distance Theory (Magee & Smith, 2013) to develop a theoretical model suggesting that experienced powerlessness reduces social closeness and subsequently causes social disengagement behaviors both at work (reduced helping, increased interaction avoidance) and at home (increased withdrawal). Our model also elucidates the processes that cause powerlessness to reduce social closeness, demonstrating that employees’ affiliation motive and …