The bases of power and the power/interaction model of interpersonal influence

This article provides a summary of work done by Raven and his colleagues on bases of power. It ranges from the initial work in 1959 of French and Raven through decades of follow-up work, and ties the work to that of others doing work on power bases. After the summary, the author responds to a series of questions that probe the work in greater depth, allowing explication of much of the thinking underlying and leading to publications of Raven and colleagues that are well known to social psychologists. While ours has been described as one of the most widely cited analyses of social power, many Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy readers may not be familiar with its development since our original statement was published in 1959. It therefore seems useful to summarize our original statement, plus the later developments, which include the Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence. In our initial papers (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 1965), we first defined social influence as a change in the belief, attitude, or behavior of a per-son (the target of influence), which results from the action of another person (an influencing agent). Social power was defined as the potential for such in-fluence, the ability of the agent or power figure to bring about such change, using resources available to him or her. These resources are represented in si