The social distance theory of power

Does Power Increase Self-Control? Episodic Priming May Not Provide the Answer

Powerful people (e.g., political and business leaders) should be able to control their impulses and act in line with long-term rather than short-term interests. However, theories of power suggest different answers to the question whether the basic experience of feeling powerful decreases (e.g., Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) or increases self-control performance (e.g., Magee & Smith, 2013). We conducted a pre-registered direct replication of the only experiment testing the effects of power on self-control (Joshi & Fast, 2013, Study 3). In contrast to the original results, social power, operationalized by episodic priming, did not affect temporal discounting. A possible explanation is the fact that the power priming failed to elevate participants’ sense of power. Thus, the null findings challenge the power priming paradigm rather than the two theories from which opposite predictions were derived. In order to understand how power affects self-control, future research may need to rely on other manipulations.

The Malleability of Stereotype Effects on Spontaneous Trait Inferences

Abstract. Past research has demonstrated that perceivers are more likely to draw spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) from stereotype-consistent behaviors than from stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. Four studies were conducted to examine the moderating role of power in stereotype effects on STIs. Priming power using the scrambled sentence task, Study 1 found that high-power participants drew STIs from elderly stereotype-consistent but not from elderly stereotype-inconsistent sentences, while low-power participants did not draw STIs from elderly stereotype-consistent or stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 by exploring the moderating role of power in gender stereotype effects on STIs. Measuring participants’ dispositional power via the Personal Sense of Power, Study 3 found that dispositional power also moderated the effects of gender stereotype on STIs. Study 4 found that compared with the baseline condition (no-power manipulation), the low-power condition inhibited STIs from stereotype-consistent behaviors, but the high-power condition did not facilitate STI formation from stereotype-consistent behaviors. The current study is the first to show that power influences the reliance on stereotypes when spontaneously inferring traits from behaviors.

Early and late brain signatures of emotional prosody among individuals with high versus low power

Using ERPs, we explored the relationship between social power and emotional prosody processing. In particular, we investigated differences at early and late processing stages between individuals primed with high or low power. Comparable to previously published findings from nonprimed participants, individuals primed with low power displayed differentially modulated P2 amplitudes in response to different emotional prosodies, whereas participants primed with high power failed to do so. Similarly, participants primed with low power showed differentially modulated amplitudes in response to different emotional prosodies at a later processing stage (late ERP component), whereas participants primed with high power did not. These ERP results suggest that high versus low power leads to emotional prosody processing differences at the early stage associated with emotional salience detection and at a later stage associated with more in-depth processing of emotional stimuli.

Status, Power, and Intergroup Relations: The Personal Is the Societal

Hierarchies in the correlated forms of power (resources) and status (prestige) are constants that organize human societies. This article reviews relevant social psychological literature and identifies several converging results concerning power and status. Whether rank is chronically possessed or temporarily embodied, higher ranks create psychological distance from others, allow agency by the higher ranked, and exact deference from the lower ranked. Beliefs that status entails competence are essentially universal. Interpersonal interactions create warmth-competence compensatory tradeoffs. Along with societal structures (enduring inequality), these tradeoffs reinforce status-competence beliefs. Race, class, and gender further illustrate these dynamics. Although status systems are resilient, they can shift, and understanding those change processes is an important direction for future research, as global demographic changes disrupt existing hierarchies.

Power and Autistic Traits

Autistic traits can help people gain and sustain power, and has probably done so throughout history, says the present paper. A number of testable claims follow from this assumption. First, the powerful should have more autistic traits than others - which they do appear to have. Among other things, powerful people, and those with many autistic traits, tend to prefer solitary activities and are often aloof. Moreover, they are often rigid and socially insensitive, low on empathy and with low scores on the trait of agreeableness - and as a rule they do not have many friends. Both groups are also more self-centered than others, more honest, less submissive, more sensitive to slights, and with a stronger tendency to engage in abstract thinking. They tend to behave in bossy or dominant ways, and their moral judgment is more based on rules than on feelings. In addition to experimental evidence, I cite biographies showing that a surprising number of presidents, prime ministers and other powerful people seem to have had traits like those in question - and interestingly, in animals, leaders are often rigid and insensitive to group members' needs and feelings, mostly acting the way they are themselves inclined to, not responding much to others. Problem solving is important in leadership, and people with many autistic traits appear often to be better thinkers than typical subjects with similar IQs. However, these and other congruities could be coincidences. Hence the question of whether traits the two groups have in common also have a common cause constitutes a strong test of the paper's thesis - and a common cause does appear to exist, in the form of testosterone's effects on the central nervous system. Finally, there is evidence that, other things equal, powerful men have more reproductive success than others. If men wielding power do indeed have more autistic traits than those less powerful, this will lead to, other things equal, such traits becoming more common - which can help explain the prevalence of autistic traits.

Power in everyday life

How does power manifest itself in everyday life? Using experience-sampling methodology, we investigated the prevalence, sources, and correlates of power in people's natural environments. Participants experienced power-relevant situations regularly, though not frequently. High power was not restricted to a limited few: almost half of the sample reported experiencing high-power positions. Positional power and subjective feelings of power were strongly related but had unique relations with several individual difference measures and independent effects on participants' affect, cognition, and interpersonal relations. Subjective feelings of power resulted more from within-participant situational fluctuation, such as the social roles participants held at different times, than from stable differences between people. Our data supported some theoretical predictions about power's effects on affect, cognition, and interpersonal relations, but qualified others, particularly highlighting the role of responsibility in power's effects. Although the power literature has focused on high power, we found stronger effects of low power than high power.

From the Immoral to the Incorruptible: How Prescriptive Expectations Turn the Powerful Into Paragons of Virtue

Ample evidence documents that power increases unethical behavior. This article introduces a new theoretical framework for understanding when power leads to more versus less unethical behavior. Our key proposition is that people hold expectations about power that are both descriptive (how the powerful do behave) and prescriptive (how the powerful should behave). People hold descriptive beliefs that the powerful do behave more unethically than the powerless, but they hold prescriptive beliefs that the powerful should behave more ethically than the powerless. Whichever expectation-descriptive or prescriptive-is salient affects how power influences one's behavior. Three experiments demonstrate that activating descriptive expectations for power leads the powerful to cheat more than the powerless, whereas activating prescriptive expectations leads the powerful to cheat less than the powerless. The current work offers new ideas for curbing unethical behavior by those with power: focus their attention on prescriptive expectations for power.

Functional Interdependence Theory: An Evolutionary Account of Social Situations

Social interactions are characterized by distinct forms of interdependence, each of which has unique effects on how behavior unfolds within the interaction. Despite this, little is known about the psychological mechanisms that allow people to detect and respond to the nature of interdependence in any given interaction. We propose that interdependence theory provides clues regarding the structure of interdependence in the human ancestral past. In turn, evolutionary psychology offers a framework for understanding the types of information processing mechanisms that could have been shaped under these recurring conditions. We synthesize and extend these two perspectives to introduce a new theory: functional interdependence theory (FIT). FIT can generate testable hypotheses about the function and structure of the psychological mechanisms for inferring interdependence. This new perspective offers insight into how people initiate and maintain cooperative relationships, select social partners and allies, and identify opportunities to signal social motives.

Are the Powerful Really Blind to the Feelings of Others? How Hierarchical Concerns Shape Attention to Emotions

Paying attention to others' emotions is essential to successful social interactions. Integrating social-functional approaches to emotion with theorizing on the reciprocal nature of power, we propose that attention to others' emotions depends on concerns over one's power position and the social signal conveyed by the emotion. Others' anger signals attack-information relevant to high-power individuals who are concerned about the legitimacy or suitability of their position. On the contrary, others' fear signals vulnerability-information relevant to low-power individuals who are concerned about their unfair treatment within an illegitimate hierarchy. Accordingly, when power roles were illegitimately assigned or mismatched with one's trait power, leaders were faster at detecting the appearance of anger (Studies 1 and 2), slower at judging the disappearance of anger (Study 2), and more accurate in recognizing subordinates' anger, whereas subordinates were more accurate in recognizing leaders' fear (Study 3). Implications for theorizing about emotion and social hierarchy are discussed.

Looking Out From the Top: Differential Effects of Status and Power on Perspective Taking

The impact of hierarchical rank on perspective taking is both practically and theoretically important, prompting considerable research attention to this issue. However, prior research has primarily examined how power affects perspective taking, and has neglected to investigate the impact of status (i.e., the respect and esteem that an individual holds in the eyes of others). Yet status represents a distinct and ubiquitous basis of hierarchical differentiation, one that may profoundly affect perspective taking. The current research addresses this gap, theorizing and testing the prediction that high status enhances perspective taking, in contrast to prior research that has generally found that high power diminishes perspective taking. Five studies, examining various forms of perspective taking across diverse paradigms, provide converging evidence that status and power exert differential effects on perspective taking. Moreover, these studies provide insight regarding the distinction between status and power, as well as the distinct psychology associated with status.

The power within: The experimental manipulation of power interacts with trait BDD symptoms to predict interoceptive accuracy

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

This study tested whether relatively low levels of interoceptive accuracy (IAcc) are associated with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) symptoms. Additionally, given research indicating that power attunes individuals to their internal states, we sought to determine if state interoceptive accuracy could be improved through an experimental manipulation of power..

METHOD

Undergraduate women (N = 101) completed a baseline measure of interoceptive accuracy and then were randomized to a power or control condition. Participants were primed with power or a neutral control topic and then completed a post-manipulation measure of state IAcc. Trait BDD symptoms were assessed with a self-report measure.

RESULTS

Controlling for baseline IAcc, within the control condition, there was a significant inverse relationship between trait BDD symptoms and interoceptive accuracy. Continuing to control for baseline IAcc, within the power condition, there was not a significant relationship between trait BDD symptoms and IAcc, suggesting that power may have attenuated this relationship. At high levels of BDD symptomology, there was also a significant simple effect of experimental condition, such that participants in the power (vs. control) condition had better interoceptive accuracy. These results provide initial evidence that power may positively impact interoceptive accuracy among those with high levels of BDD symptoms..

LIMITATIONS

This cross-sectional study utilized a demographically homogenous sample of women that reflected a broad range of symptoms; thus, although there were a number of participants reporting elevated BDD symptoms, these findings might not generalize to other populations or clinical samples.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides the first direct test of the relationship between trait BDD symptoms and IAcc, and provides preliminary evidence that among those with severe BDD symptoms, power may help connect individuals with their internal states. Future research testing the mechanisms linking BDD symptoms with IAcc, as well as how individuals can better connect with their internal experiences is needed..

Reductions in Goal-Directed Cognition as a Consequence of Being the Target of Empathy

Although empathy is widely promoted as a beneficial practice across both intergroup and interpersonal contexts, the implications of being the target of empathy for the target's own psychological state are unclear. Three experiments examined how being the target of empathy affects goal-directed cognition outcomes related to a psychological sense of power, namely, the ability to maintain goal focus and readiness to ask for more in negotiations. We reasoned that because individuals typically empathize with others they perceive as disadvantaged and needing support, trying to empathize would raise individuals up in terms of such outcomes at the same time as it pushed the targets of their empathy down in a complementary fashion. Results were consistent with these predictions across intergroup and intragroup interaction. The findings thus suggest that individuals' efforts to empathize can undermine the targets of their empathy in a subtle manner by hindering their ability to pursue their goals.

Power and Categorization

Across three experiments, participants formed a larger number of categories when in a state of high, compared to low, psychological power. Moreover, in contrast to prior categorization research, which suggests forming more categories is tantamount to reduced breadth of categorization, high-power participants also formed a larger number of superordinate (i.e., more abstract) categories than low-power participants. The present findings enhance the understanding of power in relation to categorization and simultaneously highlight the distinction between number and abstraction as fundamental aspects of categorization.

Prioritizing—The Task Strategy of the Powerful?

Previous research has shown that power increases focus on the main goal when distractor information is present. As a result, high-power people have been described as goal-focused. In real life, one typically wants to pursue multiple goals at the same time. There is a lack of research on how power affects how people deal with situations in which multiple important goals are present. To address this question, 158 participants were primed with high or low power or assigned to a control condition, and were asked to perform a dual-goal task with three difficulty levels. We hypothesized and found that high-power primed people prioritize when confronted with a multiple-goal situation. More specifically, when task demands were relatively low, power had no effect; participants generally pursued multiple goals in parallel. However, when task demands were high, the participants in the high-power condition focused on a single goal whereas participants in the low-power condition continued using a dual-task strategy. This study extends existing power theories and research in the domain of goal pursuit.

A Map for Social Navigation in the Human Brain

Deciphering the neural mechanisms of social behavior has propelled the growth of social neuroscience. The exact computations of the social brain, however, remain elusive. Here we investigated how the human brain tracks ongoing changes in social relationships using functional neuroimaging. Participants were lead characters in a role-playing game in which they were to find a new home and a job through interactions with virtual cartoon characters. We found that a two-dimensional geometric model of social relationships, a "social space" framed by power and affiliation, predicted hippocampal activity. Moreover, participants who reported better social skills showed stronger covariance between hippocampal activity and "movement" through "social space." The results suggest that the hippocampus is crucial for social cognition, and imply that beyond framing physical locations, the hippocampus computes a more general, inclusive, abstract, and multidimensional cognitive map consistent with its role in episodic memory.

Power and Sadomasochism

A large sample of 14,306 men and women was used to examine the relationship between social power and sexual arousal to consensual sadomasochism. Results showed that power increases the arousal to sadomasochism, after controlling for age and dominance. Furthermore, the effect of power on arousal by sadistic thoughts is stronger among women than among men, while the effect of power on arousal by masochistic thoughts is stronger among men than women. These findings refute common beliefs, reinforced through novels such as Fifty Shades of Grey, that the desire for sadomasochism reflects a desire to play out power dynamics in the bedroom. Instead, the effect of power is driven through a process of disinhibition that leads people to disregard sexual norms in general and disregard sexual norms associated with their gender in particular. These results add to an emerging literature that social power changes traditional gender patterns in sex.

Effects of Power on Mental Rotation and Emotion Recognition in Women

Based on construal-level theory (CLT) and its view of power as an instance of social distance, we predicted that high, relative to low power would enhance women's mental-rotation performance and impede their emotion-recognition performance. The predicted effects of power emerged both when it was manipulated via a recall priming task (Study 1) and environmental cues (Studies 2 and 3). Studies 3 and 4 found evidence for mediation by construal level of the effect of power on emotion recognition but not on mental rotation. We discuss potential mediating mechanisms for these effects based on both the social distance/construal level and the approach/inhibition views of power. We also discuss implications for optimizing performance on mental rotation and emotion recognition in everyday life.

Feeling High but Playing Low

Past research has demonstrated a causal relationship between power and dominant behavior, motivated in part by the desire to maintain the social distinctiveness created by one’s position of power. In this article, we test the novel idea that some individuals respond to high-power roles by displaying not dominance but instead submissiveness. We theorize that high-power individuals who are also high in the need to belong experience the social distinctiveness associated with power as threatening, rather than as an arrangement to protect and maintain. We predict that such individuals will counter their feelings of threat with submissive behaviors to downplay their power and thereby reduce their distinctiveness. We found support for this hypothesis across three studies using different operationalizations of power, need to belong, and submissiveness. Furthermore, Study 3 illustrated the mediating role of fear of (positive) attention in the relationship between power, need to belong, and submissive behavior.

Out of control!? How loss of self-control influences prosocial behavior: the role of power and moral values

Lack of self-control has been suggested to facilitate norm-transgressing behaviors because of the operation of automatic selfish impulses. Previous research, however, has shown that people having a high moral identity may not show such selfish impulses when their self-control resources are depleted. In the present research, we extended this effect to prosocial behavior. Moreover, we investigated the role of power in the interaction between moral identity and self-control depletion. More specifically, we expected that power facilitates the externalization of internal states, which implies that for people who feel powerful, rather than powerless, depletion decreases prosocial behavior especially for those low in moral identity. A laboratory experiment and a multisource field study supported our predictions. The present finding that the interaction between self-control depletion and moral identity is contingent upon people’s level of power suggests that power may enable people to refrain from helping behavior. Moreover, the findings suggest that if organizations want to improve prosocial behaviors, it may be effective to situationally induce moral values in their employees.

Having a Thicker Skin

Social power elicits an array of psychological tendencies that likely impact processes related to the fundamental need for belonging—including how people respond to social rejection. Across three studies, using multiple methods and instantiations of power and rejection, we hypothesized that power buffers people from the typically adverse emotional and self-esteem consequences of rejection. Supporting this, power buffered participants from increases in negative emotion and/or decreases in self-esteem in response to rejection from a romantic partner (Study 1), an anticipated interaction partner (Study 2), and a hypothetical coworker (Study 3). These findings document a direct link between power and emotional and self-esteem reactions to rejection.

The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing

Drawing from literature on construal-level theory and the psychological consequences of clothing, the current work tested whether wearing formal clothing enhances abstract cognitive processing. Five studies provided evidence supporting this hypothesis. Wearing more formal clothing was associated with higher action identification level (Study 1) and greater category inclusiveness (Study 2). Putting on formal clothing induced greater category inclusiveness (Study 3) and enhanced a global processing advantage (Study 4). The association between clothing formality and abstract processing was mediated by felt power (Study 5). The findings demonstrate that the nature of an everyday and ecologically valid experience, the clothing worn, influences cognition broadly, impacting the processing style that changes how objects, people, and events are construed.

The Prosocial Versus Proself Power Holder

Romantic partners often have to sacrifice their interests to benefit their partner or to maintain the relationship. In the present work, we investigated whether relative power within the relationship plays an important role in determining the extent to which partners are likely to sacrifice. Drawing from both classic theories and recent research on power, we tested two competing predictions on the relationship between power and sacrifice in romantic relationships. We tested whether (a) power is negatively related to sacrifice and (b) power is positively related to sacrifice. Furthermore, we also explored whether the association between power and sacrifice is moderated by commitment and inclusion of the other in the self. To test our hypotheses, we used different methodologies, including questionnaires, diary studies, and videotaped interactions. Results across the five studies ( N = 1,088) consistently supported the hypothesis that power is negatively related to tendencies to sacrifice in close relationships.

Power Gets You High

Inspiration is a source of admirable creation—but where do people get it from? We propose that power allows individuals to draw inspiration from the self. Four studies involving different social settings and operationalizations support this idea. Study 1 revealed that greater power is associated with more self-derived inspiration and less other-derived inspiration. In Study 2, participants with a higher sense of power were more inspired by their own than by their partners’ stories in face-to-face conversations, whereas lower power participants were not. In Study 3, higher power people spontaneously generated more inspiring stories involving themselves than did lower power people. Finally, participants in Study 4 felt more inspired after writing about their own experiences than after writing about someone else’s, especially after having been primed with high rather than low power. These findings suggest that powerful people prioritize themselves over others in social interaction because this is emotionally rewarding for them.

Flipping the Switch

Research suggests that high levels of interpersonal power can promote enhanced executive functioning capabilities. The present work explored whether this effect is contingent upon expectancies concerning power’s downstream cognitive consequences. Study 1 showed that social dominance orientation (SDO) predicted idiosyncratic expectancies of mental energy change toward interpersonal power. Study 2 showed that SDO moderated the executive functioning changes associated with interpersonal power and that this moderation effect was contingent upon changes in perceived mental depletion. Study 3 showed that directly manipulating expectancies of mental energy change concerning interpersonal power moderated the executive functioning consequences of power and that this moderation effect was contingent upon SDO and changes in perceived mental depletion. Together, the present findings underscore the importance of expectancies and individual differences in understanding the effects of interpersonal power.

Power Modulates Over-Reliance on False Cardiac Arousal When Judging Target Attractiveness

Individuals attempting to label their emotions look for a plausible source of their physiological arousal. Co-occurrence of plausible sources can lead to the misattribution of real (or bogus) physiological arousal, resulting in physically attractive individuals being perceived as more attractive than they actually are. In two experiments, female participants heard bogus heart rate feedback while viewing photos of attractive male models. Compared with low-power and control participants, high-power participants rated reinforced photos (increased heart rate) more attractive than non-reinforced photos (stable heart rate) to a greater extent when they heard their own bogus heart rate feedback (Experiments 1 and 2) and to a lesser extent when they heard a recording of another participant’s heart rate (Experiment 2). These findings, which suggest that power increases the tendency to misattribute one’s physiological arousal to physically attractive individuals, are discussed with reference to theories linking power and social perception.

Better Know When (Not) to Think Twice

Before approaching situations, individuals frequently imagine “what would happen, if . . . .” Such prefactual thought can promote confidence and facilitate behavior preparation when the upcoming situation can benefit from forethought, but it also delays action. The present research tested how social power predicts prefactual thought when its benefits are clear versus ambiguous. Power enhances flexible behavior adaptation and action tendencies—presumably without much forethought. We therefore proposed that power diminishes prefactual thought, unless the situation suggests that such thought is adaptive (i.e., could benefit performance). Power-holders indeed generated less prefactuals than the powerless (Experiments 1 and 2), but only if benefits for performance were ambiguous rather than clear (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that social context factors related to confidence affect prefactual thought, and that power-holders’ flexible adaptation to the situation sometimes elicits inaction (i.e., prefactual thought) rather than spontaneous action.