15.6 Differences in Relationships, Part 2: Power Distance

What do you call your teachers? As a teacher myself, I have noticed a lot of ambiguity about this issue: some students call me by my first name, others are more formal, calling me “professor” or a similar title. To reduce the potential anxiety about this, I tell my students to call me “Dr. J.” — intended as a compromise between the informal and the formal. Still, a lot of students continue to call me “professor,” and others use my first name.

This reflects another dimension that Hofstede identifies: comfort with the idea that some people have far more power than others. In high power distance (HPD) cultures, people are accepting of hierarchy and not inclined to question authority. In contrast, you can tell that the American “founding fathers” leaned more toward low power distance (LPD) because they wrote things like “all men are created equal,” and decided the leader of the country should be called “Mr. President” instead of “Your Royal Highness.” Of course, many of those same founding fathers also owned slaves, so their commitment to LPD was not total. Even better examples can be found in Scandinavia, where the informal Law of Junte says “You are not to think you’re anyone special, or that you’re better than anyone else.” (You can hear Scandinavians talk about the good and bad sides of this philosophy in this video).

How does this dimension show up in daily life? It translates into the expectation that children should be unquestioningly obedient to their parents (HPD), or that decisions should be made by democratic vote (LPD). People in HPD countries are more focused on individual success and achievement; people in LPD countries are more concerned with the social welfare and making sure no one gets left behind (you can probably see a connection to Individualism-Collectivism).

If LPD people see an extreme exercise of power, such as an authority figure blatantly disobeying rules everyone else has to follow, they demand an explanation or a reckoning; HPD people, in contrast, accept the situation for what it is. Is questioning an authority figure’s decision seen as “insubordination” (HPD) or admired as “speaking truth to power” (LPD)? The contrast is depicted humorously in a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where HPD King Arthur gets in an argument with LPD peasants who object to his claims to power. When Arthur orders one of the peasants to be quiet, they respond, “Order, eh? Who does he think he is?” Arthur asserts his divine authority (the Lady of the Lake bestowed the sword Excalibur on him), but the peasants don’t buy it: ”Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”