Actors in a position of authority can acquire legitimacy beyond the normative order when the appropriation of subordinate’s time is found valid by group members. A randomized laboratory experiment consisting a peer condition and authority condition is designed to test the hypothesis that participants in the authority condition will complete more trials of a group task than participants in the peer condition (N = 56). An expectation for the duration of the study in developed then violated as to replicate the appropriation of time as it would be experienced in the social world. The hypothesis is not supported. Among many possibly reasons for the lack support for the hypothesis, the first set of exploratory analyses provide evidence that there is a weak manipulation of legitimacy in the experimental design. The second set of exploratory analyses consists of four ordinary least squares regression and results in significant finding between propriety, self-expectations, and log total time.
