Approaches to Power Distance

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The movie Slumdog Millionaire is about Jamal, a Mumbai teen who grows up in the city slums and becomes a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Jamal endures brutal police interrogation on suspicion of cheating because the show’s producers cannot imagine that he could know so much. This may seem shocking to some people in the United States, where upward mobility is a value and underdogs become folk heroes. Why?

It has to do with a culture’s ideas about the division of power among individuals, a concept known as power distance. In India, social status is far more stratified than in the United States. The caste system—formally outlawed in 1950 but still lingering in India’s culture—placed individuals, families, and entire groups into distinct social strata. That meant that the family you were born into determined who you could associate with and marry and what job you could hold. Those born into the lowest tier (the untouchables) were considered subhuman, even contagious, and were ignored by higher castes of people. Individuals generally accepted their place in the caste system. Today, the idea that one’s social status is set in stone lingers (Bayly, 1999).

Status differences in a culture result in some groups or individuals having more power than others. But a person’s position in the cultural hierarchy can come from sources besides social class, including age, job title, or even birth order. In high power distance cultures (like those in India, China, and Japan), people with less power accept their lower position as a basic fact of life. They experience more anxiety when they communicate with those of higher status. And they tend to accept coercion as normal and avoid challenging authority. People in low power distance cultures (such as in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Australia) tolerate less difference in power between people and communicate with those higher in status with less anxiety. They are more likely to challenge the status quo, consider multiple options or possibilities for action, and resist coercion.