Looking at Favorable and Unfavorable Superior-Subordinate Relationships Through Dominance and Affiliation Lenses

Abstract

Subordinates’ perceptions of the quality of their superiors are considered. Relational framing theory and leader-member exchange theory are utilized to understand forces that influence subordinates’ impressions of their superiors. As hypothesized, results revealed that perceptions of superiors’ quality are influenced by judgments about the activation of the affiliation-disaffiliation frame in the relationship. Contrary to expectations, dominance-submission relevance judgments were unrelated to perceptions of superiors’ quality. The sex of the superior, the sex of the subordinate and Feidler’s Least Preferred Co-worker scale were each found to be unrelated to relational framing. It is concluded that the application of relational framing theory to superior-subordinate relationships can advance our understanding of the superior-subordinate relationship.