Maintaining high self-esteem is critical to our well-being and our capacity to set and pursue goals, savor positive experiences, and cope with challenging ones.16 Yet our pursuit of self-esteem can be both dysfunctional and functional.17 When we seek it because we are feeling insecure and vulnerable about our self-worth, we engage in strategies that are motivated by the need to protect or aggrandize ourselves. The esteem this behavior produces is fragile—unstable and relative, contingent on external validation from events and accomplishments. In contrast, when our behavior is grounded in a realistic acceptance of who we are, without defensiveness, the resulting self-esteem is secure—congruent and stable, an authentic expression of a person’s core self.18
Much as we might aspire to genuine self-esteem, achieving it is a lifelong quest. So, those who wish to influence us can do so by appealing to our self-esteem; and we can use the same appeal in turn, when we seek to influence others.
HOW DO WE SATISFY THESE TWO BASIC NEEDS?
Knowing that we are all driven by the pursuit of safety and self-esteem is the starting point in deciphering any power relationship; how each person satisfies these needs varies. Research in social psychology tells us that self-esteem depends on our subjective assessment of ourselves, including how we view our personal competence, the social rank we occupy, the degree of influence we have, and how worthy of love and morally upright we believe we are.19 Likewise, safety depends on securing basic physiological necessities, such as food and shelter, but also psychological resources, such as relationships with people who care for us and protect us from harm, or competences that allow us to cope with the danger and uncertainty around us.
How we each prioritize these resources at different times and in different situations varies. And we’re also influenced by those around us, with what we value shaped by our social context and the cultural beliefs of our community. Despite all these differences, we share commonalities in our quest for safety and self-esteem. Let’s see what they are and how they affect power dynamics, starting with the resource that—many say—makes the world go ’round: money.
Material Resources
“The present trend of fossil fuel consumption will cause dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” While this quote could come from almost any newspaper published over the past few years, it actually dates back to 1979. Who made such a pioneering prediction? None other than Exxon, one of the world’s biggest oil producers.20 Three years later, another Exxon internal report on the greenhouse gas effect provided predictions on global warming that, to this day, remain frighteningly accurate.21
As the scientific understanding of human-caused global warming grew, the fossil fuel industry started a full-fledged operation to hide what they had discovered. A leaked memo dated 1998 set out the industry’s strategy: Working with the same public relations group big tobacco used to hide the health effects of smoking from the public, the fossil fuel industry launched a deep-pocketed, full-throttle effort to sow doubt around climate science.22 Think tanks and advocacy organizations, funded by families who had made their fortune in oil, launched ads, published reports, and trained skeptical “scientists” to become ambassadors of climate change denialism. Between 2003 and 2010, some ninety-one conservative organizations received half a billion dollars in funding to undermine Americans’ faith in climate science,23 while, in parallel, oil companies were designing rigs from the Arctic to the North Sea to account for rising sea levels and coastal erosion.24
Perfectly aware of the long-term consequences of their greed, the barons of the oil and gas industry stayed the course. In the relentless pursuit of money, they are but one part of an economic system that places profit and consumption above everything else25—a system in which we are all complicit to some extent.26 We want the latest appliances, electronic devices, and fashions for as low a price as possible, while the companies that provide these goods and services want to make as much money as possible. In this neoliberal capitalist system espousing Milton Friedman’s thesis that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profit,”27 financial short-termism has been so legitimized that it has become the norm in many modern societies.
The logic of neoliberalism may have pushed the value we ascribe to money to an extreme, but wealth and material possessions have been highly prized and greatly desired throughout time.28 Read any of Jane Austen’s novels and you will find yourself evaluating a character’s marital prospects based on how much income and property they would bring to the marriage. Nor was this approach to social relations exclusive to late eighteenth-century British landed gentry. People have always been willing to go to great lengths to put their hands on a pot of gold, a treasure chest, or a lucrative contract, even if it means engaging in immoral or illicit behavior.
We crave money because it feeds both our basic needs: safety and self-esteem. You can’t eat or wear money, but you can exchange it for food and shelter and feel—and be—safer as a result. And you can use it to boost your self-worth, especially in individualistic societies, because wealth is the gateway to privilege that feeds people’s social status—a precious source of self-esteem for many.29 Money does indeed make the world go around. Control people’s access to money, and you will have power over them.
And yet, money isn’t always required to influence people’s behavior. Think of the clever way Napoleon wielded power over his military after the French Revolution, when the abolition of hereditary nobility deprived him of titles (and prosperous landed estates that came along with them) to reward his bravest officers. That’s when Napoleon created a universal order of merit, the Legion of Honor, as a symbolic reward to soldiers and civilians alike.30 It worked. To this day, honorific ornamentation can replace material rewards so effectively that it remains relevant as a motivational tool across industries well beyond the military. Or consider the artisans in Channapatna, a city in southern India known for its traditional wooden toys. Like everyone, they need to earn a living. Yet, sociologist Aruna Ranganathan,31 who studied their economic behavior, found that they chose to charge connoisseurs, who would be willing to pay more for their fine work, lower prices than they would accept from less-discerning buyers.
In the face of the outsize value most of us place on money and material possessions, what are we to make of Napoleon’s officers and Channapatna’s artisans? The key to these puzzles is that other resources, more psychological than material, can supersede money as an object of desire, even in economic exchanges. Status, which can be achieved through material possessions, but also through other, less tangible means, is one of these resources.
Status
We seldom come to a sense of our worth entirely on our own.32 The respect, prestige, and esteem others accord us—our status, our value in the eyes of others—also matters. Status indicates where we are positioned in relation to those around us, and we value the distinctions of rank fiercely. But status is a social construct, and in any era and culture, people have demonstrated an almost limitless ability to invent new ways to signal it.
Think about the ancient Chinese custom of foot-binding. Although the origin of the practice is still contested, a prominent theory suggests that it started and ended with different conceptions of status.33 Aristocratic families embraced it, possibly as early as the tenth century, to demonstrate that their highborn daughters had no need to work the fields or go to market as peasant girls did. Confining girls to the home also ensured their chastity and purity—another source of esteem for families, and a boon for their daughters’ marital prospects. The practice persisted until geo-politics and international commerce at the end of the nineteenth century exposed the practice to the rest of the world, reshaping its significance. To newcomers, the custom was barbaric, and those who practiced it culturally backward. The ancient practice of foot-binding was banned and eventually abandoned.34
The esteem others confer on us satisfies our need for self-esteem. For the aristocratic families of imperial China, women’s “lotus f
eet” signified their family’s place in the social hierarchy. For many of today’s consumers, luxury goods are the ultimate marker of social status: Recall how diamonds weren’t popular a century ago but later became an expensive symbol of everlasting love.35 The resources that satisfy people’s need for self-esteem change across place and time depending on cultural, economic, and institutional forces. What doesn’t change is that we can influence others when we are the gateway to their social status, and vice-versa.
Affiliation
Status is not the only resource that can replace money as a means to influence people’s behavior. Social connection—in the form of relationships, reciprocated commitment, and care—is another deeply valued resource. We long for friendship, trust, and acceptance; to both give and receive love or affection; to belong to a group.36
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, begun in 1938, is one of the longest-running research programs in all of psychology. Its goal was to understand why some people aged more successfully than others. The initial participants were two groups of men: 268 sophomores from Harvard University, and 456 boys from the toughest neighborhoods of Boston. In time, it grew to include more than two thousand boys and, eventually, their spouses.37 At first, the researchers were concerned with changes in participants’ physical attributes and intellectual ability, but over time, their focus shifted. George Vaillant, the psychiatrist who led the research from 1972 to 2004, observed, “When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”38 The healthiest octogenarians, the researchers found, were people most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty. For longevity, loneliness matters as much as smoking or alcoholism.39
How do affiliation and belonging relate to power? Objectively, surrounding ourselves with people who care for us makes us safer. Subjectively, their presence and affection enhance our sense of self-worth. Research in evolutionary psychology highlights how people internalize experiences of social acceptance and rejection in ways that can profoundly shape their assessment of their own worth.40 Kids understand early on the power of threatening to withdraw their friendship from another child, even if they don’t understand that the power derives from depriving a vulnerable peer of a key source of self-worth and a potential defense against mean-spirited bullies.
Ultimately, the people we love matter more to us than anything else. Anyone who has come close to death will tell you that their loved ones were all they thought about in those final moments.41 The pain of being denied a last farewell to hospitalized family members was what made COVID-19 so heartbreaking for so many people. We can accept death, but not death without those we love.42 Love is easily leveraged as a source of power: Threaten someone I love, and I will yield to you to ensure the safety of my loved one. At the same time, I will do all that’s in my power to stop you.
Affiliation can also be leveraged to divide us. Our desire to belong can lead us to define our self-worth on the basis of our group’s superiority to others.43 The people who give us opportunities to feel good about ourselves by discriminating against others, seen as “lesser,” gain power over us by exploiting our affiliations to feed our craving for self-esteem. Hostility toward immigrants, ethnic cleansings, and history’s long list of racial and genocidal regimes illustrate how toxic the exploitation of this lever of influence can be.
Thankfully, hate isn’t the only form of identification that influences us. Remember the artisans of Channapatna who identify so closely with their work that they value customers who they know will care for it beyond the point of sale, even if it means making less money. The value of labor changes when it’s a labor of love, which is why they want to share their work with those who understand it and will love it as much as they do.
Achievement
The intensity of the Channapatna artisans’ emotional investment in their work may be unusual, but they are far from alone in the value they place on mastering their craft. The drive to achieve and feel competent propels us to solve problems and overcome challenges by learning, analyzing, observing, and acting. We value feeling competent and accomplished because it helps make us feel safe and worthy. The more we master a craft or body of knowledge, the more control we are able to exercise in our daily lives, and the less threatened we feel by what we do not understand. And the more we stand out for our superior skill and insight, the more special and worthy we feel.
What constitutes achievement varies from person to person and across cultures. Young people in East Asia, for example, have ranked highest in international comparisons of math, reading, and science scores,44 which is partially attributable to cultural differences in what constitutes achievement. Conversely, Anglo-American culture often defines youthful achievement in terms of the “student athlete,” who epitomizes the Roman ideal of mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body).45 But while definitions differ, achievement itself is universally valued.
In organizations, the value people place on achievement offers discerning managers a constructive way to influence employees’ behavior. Research shows that the feeling of progress—born out of increasing competence and achievement—is an important source of motivation for people at work. The manager who can create an environment in which people experience progress will have a major influence on their behavior.46
Since achievement is demonstrated in myriad ways, those who define competence or “success” in a given arena have considerable leverage over those active in it. Parents’ attention to grades and the assessment methods teachers use can influence students’ behavior for good or ill. The selection committees that recognize heights of achievement—from Nobel Prizes to three-star Michelin restaurant reviews to college acceptance letters—wield enormous power because they control whose achievements in the lab, the kitchen, or at school are most worthy of commendation. If we did not attribute value to achievement and competence, prizes and grades would not exert such sway over our behavior. Yet, these external sources of validation for our achievements are not always what people are after. Some chefs stop pursuing more Michelin stars. Some artists refuse to collect awards. In doing so, they withdraw from the power relationship with those who grant these prizes and regain control over another resource that they value: their autonomy.
Autonomy
People who feel that they are in control of the choices they make, and that their actions are the result of their own volition, have autonomy. We value autonomy deeply. Indeed, the primary driver of our desire for power is not the desire for influence over the lives of others, but rather freedom from the influence of others over us.47 Autonomy makes us feel safer, by protecting us from the unwanted consequences of choices made by others; and it enhances our self-esteem, because the actions we engage in by choice feel authentic—a genuine reflection of who we are—and therefore morally worthy.48
Employees who are able to act autonomously and perceive their managers as supportive of their autonomy express more satisfaction than those who have little or no control over their work lives. In turn, their satisfaction is reflected not only in better performance evaluations, but also in healthier psyches.49 Conversely, the lack of autonomy takes a toll on employees’ physical and mental health. Respecting the autonomy of others—acknowledging our desire to decide for ourselves—is what allows managers to motivate their employees, teachers to engage their students, and parents to have children who talk to them.
The fear of losing autonomy, or the realization that it has been lost already, is easily leveraged. In his book, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, journalist Fintan O’Toole credits this fear as a major contributor to the UK’s exit from the European Union.50 Politicians like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson understood how much many in England resented the collapse of the British Empire, the increase in immigrants, and their real or perceived loss of autonomy to the European Union.51 “Make Britain great again,” they said. “Don’t let those EU bureaucrats outlaw your
favorite prawn cocktail-flavored potato chips!” Leveraging people’s desire to control their own destiny can be a powerful way to influence others’ behavior and thereby exercise power.
A deficit in autonomy can lead people to seek control over others to make up for the lack of control they have over their own lives.52 In its most extreme form, this need for control can devolve into a craving for dominance—the capacity to intimidate, coerce, and instill fear and submissiveness.53 Territorial behavior is one example.54 When deeply valued resources, starting with food and water and extending to shelter, material property, and social position, are scarce or threatened, territorial behavior can satisfy our deep need for safety, just as it did for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
In more mundane aspects of our lives, the appeal of dominance can explain why many enjoy spectator sports, particularly those with the potential for violence. One theory for why violence in sports is entertaining holds that “spectators live vicariously through athletes, so that when a player slams [another], it’s as if the spectator accomplished the play.”55 And, conveniently, spectators get to feel dominant from the safety of their seats. Fans demand aggression and violence in spectator sports, which teams and leagues are happy to provide. There’s money to be made from exploiting the human desire to dominate.
At its worst, the need for dominance comes in the form of torture, terrorism, and other direct assaults on human life. What are these if not twisted variations of the need to feel in control—if ever so briefly—by controlling whether other people suffer or flourish, live or die. People who commit such acts are seeking a warped and perverted sense of self-worth. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made this clear in the way she dealt with the perpetrator of the Christchurch Mosque terrorist attack on March 15, 2019:
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