Search
Conduct a general search, select a content type, or navigate to specialized search pages: Courses, Faculty, News, Publications, and Capstone Projects.
Faculty Profile
Joe MageeMy research revolves around the roles of hierarchy in organizations and society. I have investigated how power differences transform the way people think and behave and how people figure out who has power over whom. My colleagues and I have discovered a …
News
Six Wagner students and their rising startups chosen to enter NYU Entrepreneurial Institute accelerator… Participants: Daniel Vitaletti (MPA 2019), Heather McGee (MPA 2019), Helen Sacco (MPA 2019). The students and …
Alumni In Action
Bora Lee… and Inclusion class that I took with Professor Merle McGee helped me understand and explore that topic in a safe, academic space. Professor McGee was great at facilitating challenging conversations … that class for my work, and I really hone in Professor McGee's facilitation skills whenever I have to facilitate a …
Webpage
Black Student AssociationMission The Black Student Association (BSA) aims to provide various support mechanisms and increase social networks to BIPOC students at Wagner. With this initiative, BSA intends to enhance the educational and social experience of Wagner students and the …
Publication
In Knickman and Kovner (eds.) 2015. Health Care Delivery in the United States,Windows can sometimes be mirrors. A look at health systems abroad can enable us to develop a better understanding of our health system in the United States. An international perspective suggests that the United States has the most expensive health care …
Video
How Does Power Shape Our Perception?Professor Joe Magee describes his research on how power affects one's ability to consider others' points of view and opinions, using Hurricane Katrina as a case …
Webpage
NYU Wagner External Scholarships DirectoryScholarships/Grants The Sarawak Foundation - The Tunku Abdul Rahman Scholarship Description: To assist students studying in either local or overseas institutions. Priorities are given to students doing their first degree, masters, doctorate or …
Webpage
Stephen Charney Vladeck Junior Faculty Fellowship2025 Saba Rouhani - NYU School of Global Public Health Developing a measure of relative opioid settlement spending on law enforcement and health 2023 Lauren Taylor - NYU Grossman School of Medicine Urban Public Hospitals and the Creation of Healthcare …
Publication
Status and power: The principal inputs to influence for public managersMagee, J. C., & Frasier, C. …
Publication
Seeing Power in Action: The Roles of Deliberation, Implementation, and Action in Inferences of PowerSix experiments investigate the hypothesis that social targets who display a greater action orientation are perceived as having more power (i.e., more control, less dependence, and more influence) than less action-oriented targets. I find evidence that …
Publication
Power: Past findings, present considerations, and future directionsThis chapter offers a comprehensive review of the psychology of power. We examine past waves of social psychological investigations into power, detail the current wave of power research that has exploded in the past decade, and capture emerging themes …
Publication
Neural Substrates of Social Status Inference: Roles of Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Superior Temporal SulcusThe negotiation of social order is intimately connected to the capacity to infer and track status relationships. Despite the foundational role of status in social cognition, we know little about how the brain constructs status from social interactions …
Publication
Social Hierarchy: The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Power and StatusHierarchy is such a defining and pervasive feature of organizations that its forms and basic functions are often taken for granted in organizational research. In this review, we revisit some basic psychological and sociological elements of hierarchy and …
Publication
Emotional ties that bind: The roles of valence and consistency of group emotion in inferences of cohesiveness and common fateIn three studies, observers based inferences about the cohesiveness and common fate of groups on the emotions expressed by group members. The valence of expressions affected cohesiveness inferences, whereas the consistency of expressions affected …
Publication
A little similarity goes a long way: The effects of peripheral but self-revealing similarities on improving and sustaining interracial relationshipsWest, T. V., Magee, J. C., Gordon, S. H., & Gullett, L. …
Publication
The social distance theory of power.We propose that asymmetric dependence between individuals (i.e., power) produces asymmetric social distance, with high-power individuals feeling more distant than low-power individuals. From this insight, we articulate predictions about how power affects …
Publication
Specialization in Relational Reasoning: The Efficiency, Accuracy, and Neural Substrates of Social versus Nonsocial InferencesAlthough deduction can be applied both to associations between nonsocial objects and to social relationships among people, the authors hypothesize that social targets elicit specialized cognitive mechanisms that facilitate inferences about social …
Publication
Power, Propensity to Negotiate, and Moving First in Competitive InteractionsFive experiments investigated how the possession and experience of power affects the initiation of competitive interaction. In Experiments 1a and 1b, high-power individuals displayed a greater propensity to initiate a negotiation than did low-power …
Publication
How Personalized and Socialized Power Motivation Facilitate Antisocial and Prosocial Decision-MakingIn two studies, we investigate the effects of individuals’ power motivation on decision-making. We distinguish between two types of power motivation [McClelland, D. C. (1970). The two faces of power. Journal of International Affairs, 24, 29–47; Winter, D. …
Publication
How personalized and socialized power motivation facilitate antisocial and prosocial decision-makingIn two studies, we investigate the effects of individuals' power motivation on decisionmaking. We distinguish between two types of power motivation [McClelland, D. C. (1970). The two faces of power. Journal of International Affairs, 24, 29-47; Winter, D. …
Publication
Power, Culture, and Action: Considerations in the Expression and Enactment of Power in East Asian and Western SocietiesWe present a model of how culture affects both the conceptualizations and behavioral consequences of power, focusing in particular on how culture moderates the previously demonstrated positive relationship between power and assertive action. Western …
Publication
Acceleration with steering: The synergistic benefits of combining power with perspective-takingPower is a psychological accelerator, propelling people toward their goals; however, these goals are often egocentrically focused. Perspective-taking is a psychological steering wheel that helps people navigate their social worlds; however, …
Publication
On the folly of principals' power: Managerial psychology as a cause of bad incentivesFaulty and dysfunctional incentive systems have long interested, and frustrated, managers and organizational scholars alike. In this analysis, we pick up where Kerr (1975) left off and advance an explanation for why bad incentive systems are so prevalent …