Power: the drive for status and control
Some people want influence, resources, and a seat at the head of the table. Others genuinely don't. Your Power score shows where you sit — and what it costs and buys you.
Power is one of the most misunderstood values in psychology. We tend to treat it as a character flaw — something other people have. But in Shalom Schwartz's theory of basic human values, the framework that has shaped values research for decades, power is simply one of the universal motivations found in every culture studied: the desire for social status, prestige, and control over people and resources. Everyone carries some of it. What varies is how much, and how honestly we admit it. People who value power want to shape outcomes rather than be shaped by them. They notice hierarchies quickly, track who holds influence in a room, and feel a pull toward positions where decisions get made. None of that is inherently good or bad — power motivation builds companies and movements, and it can also corrode relationships when it goes unexamined. Opinion DNA measures Power as one of 48 dimensions, scored continuously from 0 to 100 and benchmarked against the population average, so you can see exactly how strong this drive is in you — not whether you're a 'power type,' but where you actually sit on the spectrum, and what that means for your career, money, and relationships.
What Power measures
Your Power score measures how much you value social status, prestige, and control over resources — relative to other people. In Schwartz's circular model of values, power sits in the 'self-enhancement' region, next to achievement and directly opposite universalism: prioritizing your own position tends to trade off against prioritizing everyone's welfare equally. The questions behind the score probe how much you care about wealth as a marker of standing, how important authority over others feels to you, and how much you want your social image preserved and respected. Importantly, the score measures motivation, not behavior or ability. A high scorer may never hold a leadership title; a low scorer may end up running a company. Opinion DNA reports your score on a continuous 0-100 scale against a population benchmark, because the interesting question is not 'do you value power?' — everyone does to some degree — but 'how much more or less than most people?'
▲High Power
A high Power score means status and control sit near the top of your value hierarchy. You likely feel energized by influence — being the decision-maker, controlling budgets, holding the room. You probably read social hierarchies fast and accurately, and you're comfortable competing for position in ways that others find stressful. The upside is real: high-power individuals often rise quickly because they want responsibility that others avoid. The risks are equally real. Unexamined power motivation can show up as difficulty delegating, frustration in flat organizations, transactional relationships, and a tendency to measure self-worth in rank and possessions. The benchmark matters here: knowing you sit well above the population average lets you channel the drive deliberately instead of being driven by it.
▼Low Power
A low Power score means status, prestige, and control over others simply don't motivate you much. You may find office politics baffling or distasteful, feel no pull toward corner offices, and judge people by criteria other than rank. This is not a lack of ambition — plenty of low-power scorers are intensely ambitious about craft, ideas, or service. But it has practical consequences worth knowing. You may undervalue positioning in organizations where influence determines whose work survives, get talked over by people who want authority more than you do, or feel quietly alienated in status-driven industries. Knowing the score helps you choose environments where your indifference to hierarchy is a feature, not a liability.
Where Power shows up in your life
Career and ambition
Power motivation predicts the kind of role you'll find satisfying more than the industry does. High scorers tend to thrive where there's a ladder to climb and real authority at the top; they wilt in flat structures where nobody decides anything. Low scorers often do their best work as deep specialists, founders of small teams, or independent operators — places where excellence doesn't require managing anyone.
Money
For high-power scorers, money is rarely just security — it's a scoreboard and a lever. They tend to care about relative wealth, visible markers, and the control that capital buys. Low scorers treat money more instrumentally: enough to live the life they want, with little interest in what it signals. Neither approach is wrong, but mismatched money meanings are a common hidden source of conflict between partners.
Relationships
Power values shape relationships in quiet ways: who decides where you live, whose career moves first, who controls shared resources. High scorers need to watch for turning a partnership into a hierarchy; low scorers need to watch for resentment when they cede every decision and call it easygoingness. The healthiest pairings tend to name the dynamic out loud rather than let it run in the background.
How Opinion DNA measures it
Power is one of the 24 Valuesdimensions in your Opinion DNA profile. You receive a continuous 0–100 score — not a type or a label — benchmarked against the population average, and your AI-generated personal report explains what your specific combination of scores means for your life, relationships, and career.
Related dimensions
Frequently asked questions
Is valuing power a bad thing?
No. In Schwartz's values framework, power is a universal human motivation found in every culture — the variation is in degree, not presence. Power motivation builds organizations, drives reform, and gets hard things done. It becomes corrosive mainly when it's unexamined: pursued compulsively, denied publicly, or used to dominate rather than to take responsibility. A measured score lets you work with the drive consciously.
How is Power different from Achievement?
They're neighbors in Schwartz's model but distinct. Achievement is about demonstrating competence by socially recognized standards — being visibly good at things. Power is about the position itself: status, control over resources, authority over people. Many high achievers have little interest in managing anyone, and some highly power-motivated people are happy to let others do the excelling as long as they hold the levers.
How does Opinion DNA measure the Power value?
Power is one of 48 dimensions in the assessment, which runs 179 questions in about 10-15 minutes. It draws on the research tradition behind Schwartz's theory of basic human values, and was developed over three years with academic psychologists from Oxford, Cambridge, UPenn, NYU, Royal Holloway, and City University. You get a continuous 0-100 score benchmarked against the population average — no types or labels.
Can my Power score change over time?
Values are more malleable than core personality traits, but they shift slowly — usually through major life changes like parenthood, career transitions, or shifts in financial security rather than through willpower. Values research suggests power tends to matter more in early adulthood and often softens with age. Retaking the assessment after a big life change is the most reliable way to see movement.
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