Master’s Author­ity

slave under foot — mas­ter Power

Inter­per­sonal forms of power (author­ity) are the ways a Mas­ter molds his slave dur­ing train­ing and man­ages her in the rela­tion­ship.  The inter­per­sonal forms of power are:

Reward Power - abil­ity to con­trol the reward a slave wants; rein­force­ments.   This is a pos­i­tive and per­haps the more use­ful power.

Coer­cive Power - abil­ity to cause a slave to have an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence; pun­ish­ment.   A nec­es­sary power but not always the best.

Legit­i­mate Power - based on posi­tion or mutual agree­ment. The slave agrees to accept her Mas­ter and grants him author­ity. This is why a con­tract is valu­able in slave train­ing because the con­tract grants her Mas­ter legit­i­mate power, by estab­lish­ing his author­ity in writ­ing. In addi­tion to set­ting goals, it allows both Mas­ter and slave to dis­cuss the process and allows her to see and agree to the author­ity she is grant­ing him.

Rev­er­ent Power - an elu­sive power that is based on inter­per­sonal attrac­tion. The slave iden­ti­fies with the Mas­ter and the Mas­ter is indi­vid­u­al­is­tic and respected by the slave. This is the per­sonal con­nec­tion between the two.

Expert Power - spe­cial­ized knowl­edge or skills the slave needs. Three con­di­tions must exist; trust, knowl­edge must be rel­e­vant and use­ful, and per­cep­tion as an expert by the slave.

Derived from a the­ory by social psy­chol­o­gists  John R. P. French and Bertram Raven in 1959

French, J. R. P., Raven, B. The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright and A. Zan­der. Group dynam­ics. New York: Harper & Row, 1959