Dominance through the lens of a competitive worldview: The role of relationship expectancies

Abstract

Who behaves dominantly—and why? Much compelling prior research spotlights motivational sources. We focus here on beliefs, proposing that people are less likely to behave dominantly when they expect dominance to incur greater relationship costs. We posit that this situation-specific expectancy is shaped by a general competitive worldview, seeing the social world as a “competitive jungle.” In five preregistered studies, we tested whether those with a competitive worldview expected dominance to incur less relationship harm and whether expected relationship harm predicted dominance. In Study 1 (N = 275), part- and full-time workers completed widely used scales of dominance and worldviews, allowing us to test our predicted effects and alternatives. Study 2 (N = 289) shifted from scales to employee-recounted acts of real-world managerial dominance. Studies 3A and 3B (N = 1192) featured a novel paradigm for capturing behavioral dominance, with participants role-playing as managers and employees in an incentive-compatible design. Study 4 (N = 492) manipulated expectancies to test their impact on behavior. We found support for our predictions across our studies, showing that a competitive worldview shaped relationship expectancies and that those who expected less relational damage from dominance were more likely to endorse or enact dominant behavior. These results emerged controlling for various motivational measures (e.g., relationship concern) and other expectancies (e.g., expected compliance), supporting a belief-based account of dominance that complements past work on motivational sources. Exploratory analyses suggested that those behaving dominantly may underestimate relational harm whereas those eschewing dominance may sometimes overestimate it.