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Galinsky AD, Turek A, Agarwal G, Anicich EM, Rucker DD, Bowles HR, Liberman N, Levin C, Magee JC. Are many sex/gender differences really power differences? PNAS NEXUS 2024; 3:pgae025. [PMID: 38415218 PMCID: PMC10898859 DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2023] [Accepted: 01/04/2024] [Indexed: 02/29/2024]
Abstract
This research addresses the long-standing debate about the determinants of sex/gender differences. Evolutionary theorists trace many sex/gender differences back to natural selection and sex-specific adaptations. Sociocultural and biosocial theorists, in contrast, emphasize how societal roles and social power contribute to sex/gender differences beyond any biological distinctions. By connecting two empirical advances over the past two decades-6-fold increases in sex/gender difference meta-analyses and in experiments conducted on the psychological effects of power-the current research offers a novel empirical examination of whether power differences play an explanatory role in sex/gender differences. Our analyses assessed whether experimental manipulations of power and sex/gender differences produce similar psychological and behavioral effects. We first identified 59 findings from published experiments on power. We then conducted a P-curve of the experimental power literature and established that it contained evidential value. We next subsumed these effects of power into 11 broad categories and compared them to 102 similar meta-analytic sex/gender differences. We found that high-power individuals and men generally display higher agency, lower communion, more positive self-evaluations, and similar cognitive processes. Overall, 71% (72/102) of the sex/gender differences were consistent with the effects of experimental power differences, whereas only 8% (8/102) were opposite, representing a 9:1 ratio of consistent-to-inconsistent effects. We also tested for discriminant validity by analyzing whether power corresponds more strongly to sex/gender differences than extraversion: although extraversion correlates with power, it has different relationships with sex/gender differences. These results offer novel evidence that many sex/gender differences may be explained, in part, by power differences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adam D Galinsky
- Management Division, Columbia University, New York City, NY 10027, USA
| | - Aurora Turek
- Organizational Behavior Unit, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163, USA
| | - Grusha Agarwal
- Organizational Behaviour & Human Resource Management Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5T 1P5, Canada
| | - Eric M Anicich
- Management & Organization Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
| | - Derek D Rucker
- Marketing Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
| | - Hannah R Bowles
- Organizational Behavior Unit, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163, USA
| | - Nira Liberman
- School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel
| | - Chloe Levin
- Management Division, Columbia University, New York City, NY 10027, USA
| | - Joe C Magee
- Management & Organizations Department, New York University, New York City, NY 10012, USA
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Fazel S, Vahabie AH, Navi FFT, Heysieattalab S. Unraveling the social hierarchy: Exploring behavioral and neural dynamics in shaping inhibitory control. Behav Brain Res 2024; 456:114686. [PMID: 37775080 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2023.114686] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2023] [Revised: 08/28/2023] [Accepted: 09/26/2023] [Indexed: 10/01/2023]
Abstract
Inhibitory control is crucial for regulating emotions, suppressing biases, and inhibiting inappropriate responses in social interactions. Social rank, or perceived position in the hierarchy, can influence inhibitory control, with high-rank individuals requiring it to regulate dominant behavior and low-rank individuals requiring it to regulate emotional reactions or avoid submissive behaviors. Furthermore, research suggests that social status can affect the neural mechanisms underlying inhibitory control, leading to differences in abilities and strategies based on perceived rank. In this study, we investigated the effects of social rank on inhibitory control using a dot estimation task to prime social hierarchy. Subsequently, we assessed the inhibitory control of the participants using a Go/Nogo task with photos of individuals in different social ranks. The study recruited a total of 43 students (22 males and 21 females), with a mean age of 26.8 years (SD=4.08). We measured both behavioral (reaction time and response accuracy) and electrophysiological (N200 and P300 event-related potentials) responses to investigate the neural correlates of inhibitory control. Results showed that participants responded slower to lower-rank individuals but had higher accuracy when inhibiting their response to them. The N200 amplitude was greater when presented with higher ranks stimuli in Go trials, indicating greater conflict monitoring, while the P300 amplitude was significantly higher in Nogo trials compared to Go trials. These findings suggest that social rank can influence inhibitory control and highlight the importance of considering the impact of social hierarchy in social interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Soroush Fazel
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
| | - Abdol-Hossein Vahabie
- Cognitive Systems Laboratory, Control, and Intelligent Processing Center of Excellence (CIPCE), School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
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Hadar B, Katzir M, Pumpian S, Karelitz T, Liberman N. Psychological proximity improves reasoning in academic aptitude tests. NPJ SCIENCE OF LEARNING 2023; 8:10. [PMID: 37120420 PMCID: PMC10148871 DOI: 10.1038/s41539-023-00158-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2022] [Accepted: 03/13/2023] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Performance on standardized academic aptitude tests (AAT) can determine important life outcomes. However, it is not clear whether and which aspects of the content of test questions affect performance. We examined the effect of psychological distance embedded in test questions. In Study 1 (N = 41,209), we classified the content of existing AAT questions as invoking proximal versus distal details. We found better performance with proximal compared to distal questions, especially for low-achieving examinees. Studies 2 and 3 manipulated the distance of questions adapted from AATs and examined three moderators: overall AAT score, working-memory capacity, and presence of irrelevant information. In Study 2 (N = 129), proximity (versus distance) improved the performance of low-achieving participants. In Study 3 (N = 1744), a field study, among low-achieving examinees, proximity improved performance on questions that included irrelevant information. Together, these results suggest that the psychological distance that is invoked by the content of test questions has important consequences for performance in real-life high-stakes tests.
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Affiliation(s)
- Britt Hadar
- School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | | | - Sephi Pumpian
- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Tzur Karelitz
- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Nira Liberman
- School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
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Hou Q, Meng L. I am entitled to it! Social power and context modulate disadvantageous inequity aversion. Int J Psychophysiol 2022; 181:150-159. [PMID: 36154950 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.09.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2022] [Revised: 04/14/2022] [Accepted: 09/14/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Previous research consistently indicated that social power influences one's fairness consideration. However, it is unclear how social power and context jointly affect inequity aversion and whether these processes would be manifested in brain activities. In this study, participants were randomly assigned into either high or low power condition and then took part in a modified ultimatum game (UG) as responders in both gain and loss contexts, with their event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded. Behavioral results showed that powerful participants were more likely to reject unfair offers in both contexts compared with powerless ones. In addition, powerful participants showed a more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN) loss-win difference wave (d-FRN) upon presentation of proposed offers compared with powerless participants only in the gain context. Interestingly, in a later time window, differences of P300 responses to proposed offers were modulated by social power in both gain and loss contexts. These results suggested that powerful people were more sensitive to fairness levels and FRN may manifest fairness consideration in a gain context, but not in a loss context. Meanwhile, P300 is sensitive to fairness considerations in both gain and loss contexts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qinghui Hou
- School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China; Key Laboratory of Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
| | - Liang Meng
- School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China; Institute of Organizational Behavior and Organizational Neuroscience, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China.
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Lin E, Schmid PC. Does power increase attention to rewards? Examining the brain and behavior. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2022.104332] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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Yang H, Wang X, Lu A, Zhang M, Liu Y. How power and personality trait of others affect impression: Evidence from event-related potentials. COGENT PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1080/23311908.2022.2029246] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Hongling Yang
- School of Management, Guangdong Industry Polytechnic, Guangzhou, GD, China
| | - Xuebin Wang
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, China
- Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, China
| | - Aitao Lu
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, China
- Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, China
| | - Meifang Zhang
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, China
- Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, China
| | - Yaozhong Liu
- School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, GD, China
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