A Psychology of Power that is Embedded in Societal Structures

Here, we look ahead to a psychology of power that is embedded in societal structures, specifically with regard to the North American context of race, gender, and social class. We argue that studies of power are limited when decoupled from these societal structures of power and we make this argument by examining dominant working definitions and links between power and prosociality. We end with a suggestion that a fully embedded and historical psychological account of social power will require greater constraints on generality, additional descriptive work on the experience of power in everyday life, and methods and samples that bring research on social power out of university spaces and into the places, spaces, and institutions where that power is intertwined.