The powerful, the powerless, and the empowered: Visualizations of power in high school and university through social network analysis

Abstract

The investigation uses Popitz’s power theory (1992) to examine relationships among social power position, attractiveness, and verbal aggressiveness comparing social networks of high school and university students. 117 high school PE students and 195 university PE students participated in the research completing both a network and a joint non-network questionnaire. Visone 1.1 software was used for the processing of the network data and SPSS 26 was implemented for the non-network data. The results revealed in both settings that students demonstrating scientific/task attractiveness develop authoritative power/power of internalized control in their network and are protected from verbal aggressiveness and enforcement of instrumental power/power of externalized control. Social attractiveness enhances the development of authoritative power/power of internalized control in high school only. In this research, a type of powerful student is suggested who does not tend to concentrate power but rather to share power for empowering the powerless ones. © The Author(s) 2022.