Interpersonal Power Inventory (IPI)

1. Abstract

The Interpersonal Power Inventory (IPI) is an established psychometric instrument designed to measure social influence tactics and perceived bases of power in interpersonal and organizational dyads. Developed by social psychologist Bertram H. Raven and colleagues Joseph Schwarzwald and Meni Koslowsky in 1998, the inventory operationalizes the refined Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence. This model significantly expands upon the classic taxonomy introduced by French and Raven (1959), which initially delineated five interpersonal power bases: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert power. Raven’s subsequent theoretical expansions differentiated these primary constructs into eleven discrete, nuanced sub-dimensions: impersonal reward, personal reward, impersonal coercion, personal coercion, legitimate position, legitimate reciprocity, legitimate equity/equality, legitimate dependence, referent power, expert power, and informational power.

The standard inventory comprises 44 self-report items evaluated on a 7-point Likert-type compliance scale. It is configured in dual parallel forms to assess both the influencing agent’s perspective (e.g., the Superiors Version or counselor/practitioner form) and the target agent’s perspective (the Subordinate Version or client/employee form). Psychometric evaluations across diverse organizational, clinical, educational, and cross-cultural cohorts demonstrate robust construct validity, high internal consistency (with subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely falling between .71 and .91), and verified factorial integrity confirmed via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). This article provides a comprehensive academic review of the IPI, detailing its theoretical architecture, psychometric properties, scoring procedures, clinical and managerial utilities, and the complete 44-item instrument.

2. Keywords

Interpersonal Power Inventory, social power bases, Power/Interaction Model, Bertram H. Raven, interpersonal influence, coercive power, reward power, legitimate power, expert power, referent power, informational influence, psychometrics.

3. Authors

The conceptual framework and psychometric operationalization of the Interpersonal Power Inventory were formulated by a prominent team of organizational and social psychologists:

• Bertram H. Raven, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Raven was a pioneering social psychologist renowned globally for his seminal collaboration with John R. P. French Jr. on social power, as well as decades of empirical refinement culminating in the Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence.
• Joseph Schwarzwald, Ph.D.: Professor of Psychology at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Dr. Schwarzwald has contributed extensively to social psychology, intergroup relations, social influence, and compliance dynamics within military, educational, and corporate structures.
• Meni Koslowsky, Ph.D.: Professor of Psychology at Bar-Ilan University and Ariel University, Israel. Dr. Koslowsky is an international authority on industrial-organizational psychology, research methodology, stress, organizational commitment, and interpersonal influence tactics in hierarchical environments.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Interpersonal Power Inventory (IPI) is to systematically evaluate the quantitative and qualitative utilization of power bases that an influencing agent (such as a corporate supervisor, mental health counselor, physician, or educator) employs to elicit compliance or cognitive-behavioral change from a target individual (such as a subordinate, client, patient, or student). Classical social influence metrics often suffered from severe psychometric constraints, such as forced-choice formats, single-item indices, or crude categorical collapsing of distinct psychological phenomena into monolithic categories like “hard” versus “soft” power. The IPI was purposefully constructed to remediate these psychometric deficiencies by capturing the multi-faceted mechanisms of human social exchange through an empirically sound, multi-item measurement paradigm.

From an applied perspective, the IPI serves several distinct clinical, organizational, and educational objectives:

• Organizational Diagnostics and Leadership Assessment: The IPI enables organizational consultants and human resource specialists to diagnose managerial leadership styles. It clarifies whether a supervisor relies predominantly on positional authority and coercive sanctioning—which frequently induce psychological reactance, burnout, and turnover—or on informational, referent, and personal reward bases, which correlate positively with job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), and intrinsic task motivation.
• Counseling and Therapeutic Process Research: Within psychotherapy and clinical psychology, the therapeutic alliance is fundamentally an interpersonal influence process. Counselors and clinicians utilize social power to facilitate behavioral compliance, treatment adherence, and cognitive restructuring. The IPI allows researchers and supervisors to examine how a therapist’s perceived expert, legitimate, or referent authority impacts client resistance, therapeutic rupture, and long-term treatment outcomes, particularly in forensic, court-mandated, or substance rehabilitation settings.
• Dyadic and Conflict Interaction Analysis: By providing parallel agent (superior/counselor) and target (subordinate/client) forms, the IPI empowers researchers to examine perceptual congruence or asymmetry within dyads. Discrepancies between an agent’s self-reported influence strategy and a subordinate’s perceived coercion provide vital diagnostic information regarding workplace friction, institutional injustice, and communication breakdown.
• Pedagogical and Academic Settings: In educational psychology, the IPI is deployed to evaluate classroom management strategies, assessing how instructor reliance on legitimate dependence or personal approval impacts student engagement, academic integrity, and self-efficacy.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the IPI is social power, defined conceptually as the potential or realized ability of an influencing agent ($O$) to induce changes in the beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors of a target person ($P$), utilizing resources inherently embedded within the dyadic social relationship. Raven (1992, 1993) revised the original French and Raven (1959) five-factor framework into an 11-dimensional taxonomy. The IPI operationalizes these eleven distinct power bases, grouping them under six overarching categories:

1. Coercive Power (Impersonal and Personal)

Coercive power is predicated on the target’s expectation of receiving negative valences or punitive sanctions if they fail to conform to the agent’s influence attempts.

• Impersonal Coercion: Rooted in formal, structural, or administrative penalties. In the workplace, this encompasses pay cuts, demotions, or termination; in clinical or court-mandated contexts, it involves revocation of privileges, formal reprimands, or negative legal evaluations (e.g., “I can make it more difficult for him/her to get an earlier release”).
• Personal Coercion: Relies on the threat of relational rejection, emotional withdrawal, interpersonal coldness, or public disapproval. The target complies specifically to avert the pain of relational ostracism or being placed on the agent’s “bad side” (e.g., “I may be cold and distant if he/she does not do as requested”).

2. Reward Power (Impersonal and Personal)

Reward power stems from the target’s perception that the influencing agent can mediate positive valences or desirable outcomes upon successful compliance.

• Impersonal Reward: Involves administrative, tangible, or material benefits controlled by the agent’s structural role, such as promotions, salary increases, or reduced administrative fees (e.g., “A good evaluation from me could lead to an earlier release from court-ordered counseling or other benefits”).
• Personal Reward: Derives from intangible, psychological, and relational affirmations. The agent provides warmth, personal approval, praise, or social acceptance in exchange for compliance (e.g., “It makes the client feel better to know I like him/her”).

3. Legitimate Power (Position, Reciprocity, Equity, and Dependence)

Legitimate power operates via internalized norms, values, or structural role expectations dictating that the agent possesses the legitimate right to prescribe behavior and that the target possesses a moral or social obligation to comply.

• Legitimate Position: Stemming from traditional hierarchical authority, structural titles, or professional roles (e.g., “After all, I am the counselor, and the client should feel some obligation to go along”).
• Legitimate Reciprocity: Anchored in the universal social norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960). The target feels morally obligated to comply because the agent has previously performed favors, granted concessions, or provided assistance (e.g., “I have done some nice things for him/her in the past and so he/she does this in return”).
• Legitimate Equity (Compensatory Fairness): Grounded in the norm of distributive equity or restorative compensation. The target complies to make amends for previous errors, inconvenience caused, or deficiencies in past performance (e.g., “By doing so, he/she can make up for some difficulties he/she may have caused in the past”).
• Legitimate Dependence (Social Responsibility): Derived from the social responsibility norm (Berkowitz & Daniels, 1963), wherein an individual feels obligated to assist someone who depends upon them for help, especially when the agent is vulnerable, overloaded, or unable to succeed independently (e.g., “It is clear that I really depend on the client to do this for me”).

4. Expert Power

Expert power is based on the target’s perception that the agent possesses superior knowledge, specialized training, technical competence, or diagnostic acumen. The target conforms because they trust the agent’s professional judgment and believe the agent knows the optimal strategy to solve the problem (e.g., “He/she probably feels I know the best way to handle the situation”). Unlike informational influence, the cognitive rationale does not need to be fully understood by the target; compliance is granted simply because of faith in the agent’s expertise.

5. Referent Power

Referent power operates through the target’s psychological identification with, admiration for, or desire to feel closely associated with the agent. The target adopts the agent’s values, attitudes, or behavioral preferences as a mechanism to establish or maintain cognitive oneness, emulate a role model, or validate their own self-concept (e.g., “He/she looks up to me and generally models his/her behavior accordingly”).

6. Informational Power

Informational power (often termed direct persuasion) is entirely independent of the social relationship or the agent’s personal attributes. It relies entirely on the intrinsic logic, coherence, relevance, and factual content of the communication itself. Once the agent explains the contextual rationale, the target experiences cognitive reorganization, perceives the functional utility of the change, and independently adopts the behavior (e.g., “Once I point it out, he/she can see why the change is necessary”).

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical bedrock of the Interpersonal Power Inventory is Bertram H. Raven’s Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence (Raven, 1992, 1993, 2008), which represents an advanced systemic evolution of the foundational social power taxonomy first articulated by John French and Bertram Raven in 1959.

The classical French and Raven model conceptualized social power primarily as a static, five-factor typology (reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert), later supplemented by informational power (Raven, 1965). While widely embraced, the initial paradigm was frequently critiqued for failing to account for the dynamic, iterative, and reciprocal nature of human interaction. In response, Raven developed the comprehensive Power/Interaction Model, which conceptualizes an influence attempt not as an isolated behavioral event, but as a sequential, multi-stage social-cognitive process:

1. Motivation to Influence: The agent experiences an underlying motivation or goal that cannot be accomplished without altering the behavior, beliefs, or emotional states of another person.
2. Assessment of Available Power Bases: The agent conducts an internal, often automatic audit of their systemic and interpersonal resources. They evaluate the availability, viability, and social costs of various power bases relative to the target’s personality, status, and perceived susceptibility.
3. Selection of Influence Strategy: The agent chooses a specific power strategy influenced by contextual norms, organizational climate, personal values, ethical constraints, the anticipated likelihood of success, and the desire to maintain or terminate the dyadic relationship. For example, coercive tactics may produce immediate behavioral compliance but carry high surveillance costs and engender resentment, whereas informational tactics require more cognitive effort but foster enduring, internalized change without ongoing monitoring.
4. Implementation of the Influence Attempt: The agent communicates the request, which may involve direct verbal assertion, rational persuasion, implicit threats, or subtle appeals to shared values and emotional bonds.
5. Target’s Cognitive and Emotional Processing: The target perceives and interprets the agent’s strategy, experiencing varying levels of compliance, identification, psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966), or active resistance.
6. Assessment of Consequences and Feedback Loop: Both agent and target evaluate the outcome. The agent assesses whether compliance was achieved and whether surveillance is required to maintain the behavior. The target’s subsequent self-esteem, trust in the agent, and interpersonal relationship are altered, directly informing the baseline dynamics of future influence interactions.

A central theoretical postulate of Raven’s model is the crucial distinction between socially dependent and socially independent power bases. Socially dependent power (e.g., coercive, reward, legitimate position, referent) requires that the cognitive or behavioral change remains explicitly tied to the influencing agent. If the agent loses status, removes surveillance, or severs the relationship, the target’s compliance typically dissipates. Conversely, informational power represents socially independent change: once the cognitive logic of the message has been integrated into the target’s cognitive schema, the behavior persists entirely independent of the agent’s continued presence, status, or surveillance.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Interpersonal Power Inventory has been extensively investigated across diverse organizational sectors, cultural contexts, and clinical domains. Empirical evidence confirms robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity has been verified across numerous multi-sample investigations conducted by Raven, Schwarzwald, and Koslowsky (1998), as well as independent replications across educational, healthcare, and industrial institutions. Second-order factor structures consistently demonstrate that the 11 individual power bases load appropriately onto higher-order constructs representing “harsh” (e.g., impersonal coercion, impersonal reward, legitimate position) versus “soft” (e.g., informational, expert, referent, personal reward, legitimate dependence) influence modalities.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The convergent validity of the IPI has been established through substantial correlations with established leadership and influence scales, including Kipnis, Schmidt, and Wilkinson’s (1980) Profile of Organizational Influence Strategies (POIS) and Yukl’s Influence Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ). Research consistently shows that:

• The IPI Informational and Expert power subscales demonstrate strong positive correlations ($r = .58$ to $.72, p < .001$) with Rational Persuasion and Consultation dimensions on the IBQ.
• The IPI Impersonal Coercion subscale correlates strongly ($r = .61$ to $.69, p < .001$) with Pressure and Assertiveness scales on the POIS.
• Discriminant validity is supported by low inter-correlations between structurally divergent power bases; for instance, Informational Power exhibits near-zero or non-significant correlations with Impersonal Coercion ($r = -.08$ to $.12$), indicating that respondents clearly distinguish between logical persuasion and administrative intimidation.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The predictive utility of the IPI is evidenced by its capacity to forecast vital organizational and therapeutic outcomes:

• Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: Subordinates who report high exposure to supervisory “soft” power bases (expert, referent, informational, personal reward) report significantly higher job satisfaction, affective commitment, and organizational citizenship behaviors, whereas frequent supervisory reliance on impersonal coercion and legitimate position predicts job dissatisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intentions (Schwarzwald, Koslowsky, & Agassi, 2001).
• Therapeutic Alliance and Client Compliance: In counseling and clinical psychology research (e.g., Anderson, 2008), counselor ratings on the IPI counselor version demonstrated that therapists who utilize expert, referent, and legitimate dependence tactics foster stronger therapeutic alliances (measured via the Working Alliance Inventory) and achieve higher rates of treatment adherence compared to those relying on impersonal coercion or rigid legitimate position.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Interpersonal Power Inventory has been verified through assessments of internal consistency, item-total correlations, and test-retest temporal stability across diverse occupational and cultural cohorts.

Internal Consistency

Extensive psychometric investigations reported by Raven, Schwarzwald, and Koslowsky (1998) indicate that all 11 subscales exhibit satisfactory to excellent internal consistency. Typical Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients documented across empirical studies are summarized below:

• Informational Power (4 items): $lpha = .82 – .88$
• Expert Power (4 items): $lpha = .80 – .86$
• Referent Power (4 items): $lpha = .81 – .87$
• Legitimate Position (4 items): $lpha = .74 – .82$
• Legitimate Reciprocity (4 items): $lpha = .76 – .83$
• Legitimate Equity (4 items): $lpha = .72 – .80$
• Legitimate Dependence (4 items): $lpha = .73 – .81$
• Personal Reward (4 items): $lpha = .78 – .85$
• Impersonal Reward (4 items): $lpha = .79 – .86$
• Personal Coercion (4 items): $lpha = .75 – .84$
• Impersonal Coercion (4 items): $lpha = .77 – .85$

Composite reliability coefficients calculated in structural equation modeling (SEM) contexts routinely exceed the recommended .70 threshold, demonstrating that each subscale possesses adequate measurement precision without excessive item redundancy.

Test-Retest Stability

In stability studies with retest intervals ranging from two to six weeks, the temporal stability of the IPI has proven robust. Test-retest reliability coefficients ($r_{tt}$) for supervisory and subordinate responses range from $.71$ to $.86$, indicating that while situational factors can produce subtle variations, perceived power base utilization reflects a stable, enduring interpersonal pattern.

9. Factor Analysis

The underlying factorial architecture of the Interpersonal Power Inventory has been rigorously examined using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) methodologies.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During the initial validation phase conducted by Raven et al. (1998), the 44 items were subjected to principal axis factoring with both varimax (orthogonal) and promax (oblique) rotations. The empirical factor solutions cleanly extracted 11 distinct factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, accounting for approximately 62% to 68% of the total variance across diverse samples. Each of the 44 items exhibited primary factor loadings exceeding $.45$ (with the majority loading between $.55$ and $.82$) onto their hypothesized power base, with negligible cross-loadings (rarely exceeding $.25$).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent structural investigations utilizing CFA have explicitly compared competitive structural models: a single-factor model, French and Raven’s traditional 5-factor model, a 6-factor model, and Raven’s refined 11-factor model. Goodness-of-fit indices consistently demonstrate the superior statistical fit of the 11-factor specification:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.92 – .95$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.91 – .94$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.042 – .054$ (90% CI: [.038, .059])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.046 – .052$
• $\chi^2 / df$ ratio typically falls within the highly acceptable range of $1.5$ to $2.2$.

Higher-Order Factor Structure

Hierarchical and second-order factor models indicate that the 11 first-order factors coalesce into two robust higher-order dimensions: Harsh / Positional Power (comprising Impersonal Coercion, Impersonal Reward, Legitimate Position, and Personal Coercion) and Soft / Personal Power (comprising Expert, Informational, Referent, Personal Reward, Legitimate Dependence, Legitimate Reciprocity, and Legitimate Equity). This higher-order bifurcation validates the long-standing theoretical postulation that targets cognitively differentiate between influence attempts based on psychological rapport and persuasive credibility versus those based on institutional mandate and external contingencies.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Interpersonal Power Inventory is structured as a standardized, multidimensional psychometric instrument. Below are the structural and administrative specifications:

• Instrument Name: Interpersonal Power Inventory (IPI).
• Alternate Versions:
  • Superiors / Practitioner Version: Evaluates the agent’s self-reported utilization of power bases to achieve compliance from a client, subordinate, or supervisee.
  • Subordinate / Employee Version (IPI-EV): Evaluates the target’s perception of why they complied with the supervisor’s or practitioner’s directives.
• Administration Format: Standard paper-and-pencil self-report inventory or digital computerized survey administration.
• Number of Items: 44 items total, with exactly 4 items allocated to each of the 11 distinct power bases.
• Target Population: Adults (aged 18 and older) engaged in organizational, corporate, educational, counseling, or clinical hierarchical relationships.
• Administration Time: Approximately 12 to 20 minutes.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale reflecting the perceived likelihood of compliance:
  • 1 = Much less likely to comply
  • 2 = Less likely to comply
  • 3 = A bit less likely to comply
  • 4 = Would not affect their tendency to comply
  • 5 = A bit more likely to comply
  • 6 = More likely to comply
  • 7 = Much more likely to comply
• Scoring and Subscale Mapping: Subscale scores are computed by calculating the arithmetic mean or sum of the 4 designated items for each power base. Higher scores indicate a greater reliance upon (or susceptibility to) that specific power base. The 44 items map onto the 11 subscales as follows:
  • Impersonal Reward: Items 1, 22, 32, 41
  • Personal Reward: Items 8, 14, 29, 34
  • Impersonal Coercion: Items 6, 13, 31, 39
  • Personal Coercion: Items 10, 18, 23, 44
  • Legitimate Position: Items 2, 20, 28, 35
  • Legitimate Reciprocity: Items 7, 12, 33, 43
  • Legitimate Equity: Items 11, 21, 30, 37
  • Legitimate Dependence: Items 9, 16, 25, 40
  • Expert Power: Items 3, 19, 26, 38
  • Referent Power: Items 5, 15, 27, 36
  • Informational Power: Items 4, 17, 24, 42

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Interpersonal Power Inventory was formally published in its comprehensive 11-factor form in 1998 by Bertram H. Raven, Joseph Schwarzwald, and Meni Koslowsky in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. The conceptual foundations were established earlier in Raven’s seminal 1992 and 1993 theoretical treatises.

Regarding permissions and accessibility:

• Academic and Non-Commercial Research: The scale items, scoring keys, and administrative frameworks are made available for non-commercial academic research, doctoral dissertations, and scientific investigations. Researchers may administer the instrument provided appropriate citation is given to the authors and the original publication.
• Commercial and Organizational Consulting: Commercial use, deployment within proprietary corporate executive coaching programs, or inclusion in paid psychological assessment batteries typically requires permission from the copyright holders or publishing journal.
• Fees: There is no standard per-administration fee for independent academic scholars. Inquiries regarding adapted commercial applications or corporate licensing should be directed to the corresponding authors or the permissions department of Wiley-Blackwell.

12. References

The following references represent foundational and contemporary literature concerning the Interpersonal Power Inventory and the Power/Interaction Model:

• Anderson, R. S. (2008). Counselor gender self-confidence and social influence in counseling: Counselor perceptions of the therapeutic alliance (Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University). OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/
• Berkowitz, L., & Daniels, L. R. (1963). Responsibility and dependency. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(5), 429–436. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040250
• Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.
• French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. H. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150–167). University of Michigan Press.
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
• Kipnis, D., Schmidt, S. M., & Wilkinson, I. (1980). Intraorganizational influence tactics: Explorations in getting one’s way. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(4), 440–452. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.65.4.440
• Koslowsky, M., & Schwarzwald, J. (2001). The Power/Interaction Model: An overview of conduct and research. In B. H. Raven & J. Schwarzwald (Eds.), Social Influence and Power: Clinical and Organizational Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Raven, B. H. (1965). Social influence and power. In I. D. Steiner & M. Fishbein (Eds.), Current studies in social psychology (pp. 371–382). Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
• Raven, B. H. (1992). A power/interaction model of interpersonal influence: French and Raven thirty years later. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 7(2), 217–244.
• Raven, B. H. (1993). The bases of power: Origins and recent developments. Journal of Social Issues, 49(4), 227–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1993.tb01191.x
• Raven, B. H. (2008). The bases of power and the power/interaction model of interpersonal influence. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 8(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-2415.2008.00159.x
• Raven, B. H., Schwarzwald, J., & Koslowsky, M. (1998). Conceptualizing and measuring a power/interaction model of interpersonal influence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(4), 307–332. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01708.x
• Schwarzwald, J., Koslowsky, M., & Agassi, V. (2001). Capitulation to the extreme: Coercive power and subordinate outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 16(2), 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011112423377

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)