Measures the extent to which a person endorses social hierarchy over social equality at a specific point in time. The scale captures momentarily activated beliefs about whether power disparities among people are acceptable and expected, rather than measuring power distance as a stable personality trait or cultural value. Items are sentence-completion stems paired with a response scale anchored by social hierarchy at one end and social equality at the other.
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
The origin of the scale was not identified in the original papers; it appears to have been developed by Zhang, Winterich & Mittal (2010) using a standard social cognition priming approach. Items are sentence-completion starters rated on a 7-point response scale where 1 = social hierarchy is important and 7 = social equality is important. Researchers should note that the scale is directionally scored toward equality, so scores should be reverse-coded before analysis when higher values are intended to represent greater power distance. Used across Studies 1C and 3 (Zhang et al. 2010) and Studies 2 and 5 (Winterich & Zhang 2014); alpha ranged from .91 to .92 across all administrations. The scale has been used primarily as a manipulation check and provides evidence of predictive validity through its sensitivity to experimental priming. No formal structural validity testing (CFA, AVE) has been conducted.
Zhang, Y., Winterich, K.P., & Mittal, V. (2010). Power distance belief and impulsive buying. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(5), 945-954.
Free access to 2455+ psychometric scales at PsychScales