Toronto: Individuals holding senior positions or authority have higher levels of interpersonal conflict, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by Scott Schieman, professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and Sarah Reid, involved data from a 2005 sample of 1,785 working adults in the US.

This is the first study of a nationally representative sample to document the link between power and conflict in the workplace across a broad cross-section of jobs and sectors.

"We show that a highly desired attribute of the job, authority, comes with some interpersonal costs, but those costs aren't distributed equally across key social groups," said Schieman.

The study found that workers with higher levels of authority report significantly higher levels of exposure to interpersonal conflict from all sources at work.

Men with authority also reported greater conflict than similarly-positioned women. Younger workers with power report the highest level of conflict with others in the workplace.