Guerrero, Close Encounters, 6e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
Lecture Notes
Chapter 12: Influencing Each Other: Dominance and Power Plays in
Relationships
Chapter Outline
I. Defining Power and Related Terms
• Power refers to an individual’s ability to control or influence others to do what the
individual wants, as well as a person’s ability to resist influence.
• Controlling valuable resources:
o Relational partners can grant or withhold resources such as money and
possessions, affection, sex, or time spent together.
• Relational partners exercise power when they divide tasks, decide what to buy, and
how to spend their time together. In interpersonal relationships, power reflects the
ability to affect the behavior, emotions, or decisions of one’s partner.
• Free agents have agency: Agency is an empowering aspect of experience where a
person is able to freely control the surrounding environment, including social
interaction and relationships.
• Dominance refers to the expression of power to gain or maintain influence over
another and is determined by submissive responses; it is not dominance unless it
works.
• Dominant people tend to possess at least some combination of the following
characteristics—poise, panache, self-assurance, and the ability to control conversation—
as described below.
o Poise: a smooth and calm appearance during stressful situations.
o Panache: The elusive quality that some people have that draws others in;
something about the commands attention and makes her or him memorable.
o Self-assurance: A composite of person’s focus, drive, and leadership qualities.
• Dyadic power theory:
o Dyadic power theory suggests that most dominance would be displayed by people
in equal power positions because they deal with conflict and struggle for control.
Guerrero, Close Encounters, 6e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
II. Power Principles
A. Power as a Perception
1. Power is a perception: People can use powerful communication, but if others
don’t perceive or accept their power, their behavior is not powerful nor
dominant.
2. Some people have objective power, which is the authority associated with
factors such as position, strength, weaponry, and wealth, but fail to influence
other people.
3. Cultural power stereotypes: People who seek power overestimate power
motivations of other people and are hyperaware of communication cues that
can be used to influence others or resist power.
4. Influence or domination without power:
a. People of humble means and little objective power can be influential and
wield real power when they stand for something that large groups of
followers believe.
5. Thinking of one’s self as powerful does not ensure that one will be powerful
but thinking of yourself as powerless virtually guarantees powerlessness.
B. Power as a Relational Concept
1. Power exists in relationships: Power is a relational concept and one
individual cannot be dominant without someone else being submissive.
2. A submissive person may defer to the preferences and wishes of the dominant
person, help them to pursue their goal, and adopt their partner’s goals as their
own, thereby facilitating relational coordination and satisfaction.
3. Balance of power is dynamic:
a. Men are more likely than women to perceive the world as hierarchical
and organized in pecking orders and power structures.
b. Women, however, often have more decision-making power in several
areas in a relationship, including making decisions about major home
purchases and what to do on the weekends.
4. Partners who exercise little influence over each other may not really be a
couple, but virtual strangers in the same household, while partners in close
relationships are interdependent.
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C. Power as Resource Based
1. Power represents a struggle over resources: Scarce and valued resources
create more intense and protracted power struggles.
2. Resources such as communication skill, physical attractiveness, a sense of
humor, parenting ability, sexual rewards, affection, companionship, and love
are exchanged in relationships equally by women and men.
D. Power as Having Less to Lose
1. Person with less to lose has greater power and people who are dependent on
their relationship or partner are less powerful, especially if they know their
partner has low commitment and might leave them.
a. This phenomenon has been termed dependence power; the dependent
person feels greater relational threats in face-to-face communication or
via social media.
b. According to interdependence theory, quality of alternatives refers to
the relational opportunities people could have if they were not in their
current relationship.
2. The principle of least interest suggests that if a difference exists in the
intensity of positive feelings between partners, the partner with stronger
E. Power as Enabling or Disabling
1. Power can be enabling or disabling: Power is part of the human spirit that
infuses us with agency and potency and helps us achieve success. However,
excessive power or frequent power plays cripple close relationships.
2. Powerful people must be careful: Power can corrupt for people with a poor
moral identity; for those with a strong a sense of right and wrong, power can
motivate people to use power positively.
3. Communicating power through self-confident, composed behavior is most
successful in achieving goals and maintaining good relationships, whereas
power is disabling when it leads to destructive patterns of communication.
a. Emotional insensitivity occurs if a person fails to tune in to the feelings
of other people.
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SAGE Publishing, 2021
c. The chilling effect occurs when less powerful people fail to
communicate grievances to their partners. Three conditions related to
dependence power are conductive to the chilling effect.
i. First, it occurs when a person is dependent on a partner but think
their partner is uncommitted; the chilling effect is less likely to occur
in committed relationships.
ii. Second, people who are afraid of losing their partner often respond
to relationship problems by withdrawing support.
iii. Third, partners often withhold grievances to avoid negative relational
consequences such as conflict or partner aggression.
d. Power dynamics can also lead to a destructive demand–withdrawal
pattern, which occurs when one person makes demands, and their partner
gets defensive and withdraws.
F. Power as a Prerogative
1. Partner with more power can make and break the rules, a prerogative
principle as per which powerful people can violate norms, break relational
rules, and manage interactions without as much cost as less powerful people.
2. When women’s sense of personal power increases, women are as likely as
men to make the effort to initiate a relationship and to use direct rather than
indirect communication.
3. Men have more nonverbal power in the initial stages of the relationship,
III. Interpersonal Influence Goals
A. Making Lifestyle Changes
1. Giving lifestyle advice: The most frequent—and some of the most important—
influence attempts in close relationships involving the desire to change the
behavior patterns of a partner, friend, or family member.
2. Dillard’s research indicated that lifestyle change messages are usually logical,
positively presented, and direct.
B. Gaining Assistance
1. Routine influence attempt: getting your spouse to proofread your term paper,
getting a friend to drive you to another city to see your girlfriend, borrowing
money from your parents, and petitioning the university to readmit you.
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2. Personally and relationally important: When romantic partners, friends, or
family members assist you, their actions say something powerful about your
relationship—namely, that they value and support you.
3. Messages are indirect: Instead of saying, “Get me a blanket and a bowl of
popcorn,” the person might hint by saying, “I’m kind of cold and hungry. A
soft blanket and some warm popcorn would really feel good right now.”
C. Sharing Activities
1. Offers to share time and space: Joint activities play a crucial role in
maintaining relationships because they enable people to spend time together,
show common interests, enjoy companionship, and develop intimacy.
2. Important in male friendships: Men are less likely to develop intimacy via
D. Initiating Sexual Activity
1. Principle of least interest: Person who desires sex the most will have the least
power and the person who can take it or leave it has the most power.
2. Condom use in power and sexuality: More powerful partners can put their
partner at risk by coercing or persuading a partner to have unprotected sex.
3. Empowering young women to resist sexual coercion and keeping them free of
abusive partners may be areas where power is a matter of life and death.
E. Changing Political Attitudes
1. Acts of political persuasion: talking someone into joining a union, persuading
someone to vote for a political candidate, getting someone to register to vote,
F. Giving Health Advice
1. Helping partners to improve health: We may want our partner to get exercise
or to take vitamins and advise a friend to abandon an abusive relationship or
tell our teenage brother to drive carefully and party safely.
2. If the persuader is too judgmental or demanding, the receiver may resist
exercising, refuse to seek help, or rebel by engaging in dangerous behavior.
a. Psychological reactance or boomerang effects can occur when
someone is controlling or demanding and is common among defensive
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b. Conversely, socially supportive communication had positive effects and
messages that express concern without being critical may be best.
G. Changing Relationships
1. Providing relationship advice: Because the stakes are high, such influence
attempts can be problematic, and whether they are accepted or not, may signal
major changes in a relationship.
IV. Verbal Power Ploys
A. Verbal Influence Strategies
1. Compliance-gaining or influence strategies include prosocial and coercive
control strategies that may enhance personal emotional and physical well-
being.
2. However, people in more stable and equitable relationships use fewer verbal
power strategies than people in unstable or inequitable relationships.
3. Research has also shown that powerful people are more likely to be
persuasive than less powerful people, regardless of the strategies they use.
4. Direct Requests
a. Direct request, also known as the simple request or asking, is the most
common strategy for both men and women, most likely used by a person
who feels powerful and supported.
5. Bargaining
a. A bargaining strategy involves agreeing to do something for someone if
the person does something in return, a type of influence attempt also
called as promising and the quid pro quo strategy.
b. Sometimes individuals using bargaining to persuade a partner will
mention past favors or debts owed by the partner, while at other times
people use bargaining to reward their partner prior to a persuasive
request, called pregiving.
6. Aversive Stimulation
a. Negative affect strategy or aversive stimulation involves whining,
sulking, complaining, crying, or acting angry to get one’s way, hoping
the receiver will eventually comply just to stop the aversive behavior.
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b. This strategy is unsophisticated, viewed as childish, and perceived by
people as the second most unpleasant power strategy (withdrawal
ranked first).
7. Ingratiation
a. Called positive affect, ingratiation, “kissing up,” or “sucking up,” this
strategy uses excessive kindness to get one’s way.
8. Hinting
a. Called indirect requests, suggesting, or hinting, this strategy involves
implying a request without ever coming out and stating one.
b. While this is a polite strategy, its effectiveness depends on the
perceptiveness of one’s partner and it fails if the partner does not pick up
on the hint.
9. Moral Appeals
a. These compliance-gaining messages, which are also called positive
altercasting and negative altercasting, take one of two forms.
b. Positive moral appeals suggest that a good or moral person would
comply with the request. Negative moral appeals suggest that only bad
or immoral people would fail to comply.
c. Both positive and negative moral appeals associate certain behaviors with
the basic “goodness” of the receiver.
d. Such strategy ties into an individual’s identity as a basically good person
since people generally prefer to act consistent with positive self-images.
10. Manipulation
a. Manipulation strategies are used to get one’s way by making the partner
feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous, including passive-aggressive strategies.
b. Suggesting availability of other partners is manipulative and threatening
but could be an effective strategy if a partner becomes jealous.
11. Withdrawal
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a. Set of strategies variously called distancing, avoidance, withdrawal, or
passive aggression occurs when people give their partners the silent
treatment, ignore them, or limit communication with them.
b. Might not be the best strategy and worse, it does not always work, since
sometimes a partner gets fed up with being ignored and moves on.
12. Deception
a. Some people use lies or deception as a compliance-gaining strategy,
making false promises when they have no intention of keeping them and
exaggerating or make up information to gain compliance.
b. Aside from the ethical issues related to this strategy, it is a risky
13. Distributive Communication
a. With distributive strategies or antagonistic strategies, people attempt
to blame, hurt, insult, or berate their partner in an effort to gain
compliance.
b. These strategies are sometimes called bullying, are usually ineffective,
and often lead to escalated conflict and relational deterioration.
c. Unfortunately, distributive and aggressive strategies sometimes actually
work in getting one’s way and may have evolved as human resource
control behavior.
14. Threats
a. Threats such as faking a breakup, failing to cooperate until the partner
gives in, or threatening to withhold resources such as money or
information are typically ineffective.
b. People also may engage in fake violence, issue violent warnings, and act
B. Relational Control Moves: One-Ups and One-Downs
1. Messages can be coded as dominant and controlling, or one-up messages;
deferent or accepting, or one-down messages; or neutral, one-across
messages, the focus being on the form of the conversation, not the content.
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2. Can reveal if the individual is domineering or submissive, can enable study of
how the behavior of one partner impacts the relationship, and more
significantly it can determine the nature of the relationship between two
people.
3. Symmetrical or complementary utterance: A pair of utterances, called a
transact, can be coded as symmetrical or complementary.
a. Pattern is complementary with one person dominant and other person
submissive, whereas if both people use the same moves, it is
symmetrical.
C. Powerful and Powerless Speech
1. Investigators have identified characteristics associated with powerful speech
that occurs when speakers dominate conversations, redirect the conversation
away from topics others are discussing, and interrupt.
2. Differential use of strategies: Both men and women use more indirect and
unilateral strategies when communicating with a power figure, and by
contrast, are more direct and bilateral when communicating with a power
equal.
3. Women use more powerless speech: Powerless speech occurs when people
use tag questions or hedges, which involve asking people to affirm that one is
understood or agrees.
V. Nonverbal Positions of Power
A. Physical Appearance
1. More physically attractive people are more influential and that women are
most likely to use physical attraction to increase power or persuasion.
2. Formal, fashionable, and expensive clothes: Despite the greater variability of
women’s clothing, when women violate norms by dressing in inappropriate
attire, they produce more negative reactions than men who violate such
norms.
3. Monomorphic or muscular body: The principle of elevation suggests that
fair or not, height or vertical position is associated with power, but moving in
close and standing over someone is often perceived as intimidating.
B. Spatial Behavior
Guerrero, Close Encounters, 6e
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1. The study of interpersonal space and distance, called proxemics, reveals how
the use of space reflects and creates power. Invading someone’s space and
“getting in someone’s face” are powerful, intimidating behaviors.
C. Eye Behavior
1. Oculesics reveals numerous power behaviors, including staring, gazing while
speaking, and failing to look when listening. People perceived as powerful are
also looked at more by others, a principle we call visual centrality.
2. Staring is powerful, rude, and intrusive: looking away while listening is for
the powerful; low-status individuals must remain visually attentive.
D. Body Movements
1. Expansive body positions with arms and legs apart and away from the body
and the hands-on-hips positions convey power and dominance.
2. Interestingly, couples that are equal in power tend to display harmonious
synchronized nonverbal behavior indicative of respect and connection.
E. Touch
1. Initiation of touch is perceived as more dominant than receiving or
reciprocating touch, because the person who initiates touch is controlling the
interaction.
2. Men are more likely to initiate touch: Social norms dictate that men have the
prerogative to try to escalate intimacy in the early stages of relationships.
Women, however, initiate touch more often in marital relationships.
3. May be inappropriate or harassing: Charges of sexual harassment and even
sexual assault can be the consequences of excessive or inappropriate touch,
even when the sender means to send a message of affiliation.
Guerrero, Close Encounters, 6e
F. The Voice
1. The content of spoken words is the subject of verbal communication, but
voice tones and intonations are in the realm of nonverbal communication,
called vocalics or paralinguistics.
2. Social status can be detected: Higher class speakers have clearer articulation
and sharper enunciation of consonants, whose fewer filled pauses, like ah or
um and other speech errors, convey greater status and power.
3. Listeners can make accurate judgments: Vocal variation, which is perceived
as an immediate, affiliative behavior, is also perceived as more powerful.
Generally, louder, deeper, and more varied voices are perceived as more
dominant.
4. Higher pitched voices are both perceived as, and actually, more dominant,
while louder and slower speech rates are viewed as more dominant than softer
or faster speech rates.
a. Moderately fast voices are perceived as confident and powerful because
they suggest that the speaker knows about the subject and needs no time
to think.
G. Time
1. Powerful people are allowed to speak longer and have more speaking turns,
which gives them more opportunity to influence others.
2. However, keeping relational partners waiting may be a bad idea because it
signals their lack of importance and could be perceived as inconsiderate.
H. Artifacts
1. Having a big house, luxury cars, and expensive toys are signs of power,
particularly in our status-conscious, materialistic society.
2. The latest phone, the largest office, the reserved parking space, and the most
expensive and slimmest briefcase.
3. Similarly, giving expensive or rare gifts to loved ones is a sign of their status
and importance in one’s life.
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VI. Traditional Versus Equalitarian Marriages
• Traditional marriages are “based on a form of benevolent male dominance coupled
with clearly specialized roles.”
o When women are employed, they still retain responsibility for family work, with
the career role adding to their traditionally held family role.
o Some women in traditional marriages are not employed or only work part time so
that they can manage the house and raise children.
• In the 21st century, most women are not satisfied with traditional gender roles, and
dual-career households are the rule rather than the exception.
o Partners need to negotiate roles related to household responsibilities rather than
rely on traditional gender roles.
• In an egalitarian marriage, also called peer marriage or sharing marriage, “both
spouses are employed, actively involved in parenting, and share the responsibilities
and duties of the household.”
• Fairness and equity matter: Degree of reward, fairness, and equity are linked to sexual
satisfaction, marital happiness, contentment, satisfaction, and stability.
• Women still earn less than 80% of what men earn, creating a power discrepancy and
dependence by many wives. Sources of inequality still exist that will take additional
years and effort to break down.
VII. Culture, Equality, and Power
• Cultures have different power philosophies:
o Scandinavian countries of Northern Europe have relatively little social class
structure; people have similar levels of power, so there is little difference between
the status of men and women.
o The most gender equal countries in the world are Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands,
Denmark, and Finland, all Northern European liberal democracies with a long
history of equal rights for women.
• Women acting powerful and assertive:
o In countries like Mexico, Venezuela, Austria, and Switzerland, women are
considered less powerful than men and are often expected to defer to their male
partners.
• People may represent different culture:
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o In marriages and relationships between gay men and especially between lesbians,
sharing of tasks is more equal throughout the world.
o More equal division of labor is associated with greater relational satisfaction in gay
and lesbian couples, in contrast to heterosexual couples, where women still do
majority of household tasks.