Power triggers moral reasoning aligned with active goals and moral flexibility across contexts.

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that power elicits moral judgments in line with active goals, and moral flexibility across different contexts. Power and goals emanating from the mission associated with power were experimentally manipulated: person-centered mission, which benefits from outcome-focus, or regulation-centered mission, which benefits from rule-based focus. Power consistently elicited rule-based (deontological) moral reasoning under regulation-centered goals. However, power triggered outcome-based (utilitarian) moral reasoning under person-centered goals. Power enhanced goal serving morality due to greater goal commitment, with focal goal commitment mediating the interactive effects of power and focal goal on moral judgments. These findings show that the links between power and morality are context sensitive, flexible, and mediated by a greater commitment to active goals.

How Power Affects People: Activating, Wanting, and Goal Seeking.

Sociocognitive research has demonstrated that power affects how people feel, think, and act. In this article, I review literature from social psychology, neuroscience, management, and animal research and propose an integrated framework of power as an intensifier of goal-related approach motivation. A growing literature shows that power energizes thought, speech, and action and orients individuals toward salient goals linked to power roles, predispositions, tasks, and opportunities. Power magnifies self-expression linked to active parts of the self (the active self), enhancing confidence, self-regulation, and prioritization of efforts toward advancing focal goals. The effects of power on cognitive processes, goal preferences, performance, and corruption are discussed, and its potentially detrimental effects on social attention, perspective taking, and objectification of subordinates are examined. Several inconsistencies in the literature are explained by viewing power holders as more flexible and dynamic than is usually assumed.

Social status modulates prosocial behavior and egalitarianism in preschool children and adults.

Humans are a cooperative species, capable of altruism and the creation of shared norms that ensure fairness in society. However, individuals with different educational, cultural, economic, or ethnic backgrounds differ in their levels of social investment and endorsement of egalitarian values. We present four experiments showing that subtle cues to social status (i.e., prestige and reputation in the eyes of others) modulate prosocial orientation. The experiments found that individuals who experienced low status showed more communal and prosocial behavior, and endorsed more egalitarian life goals and values compared with those who experienced high status. Behavioral differences across high- and low-status positions appeared early in human ontogeny (4-5 y of age).

Individualistic powerfulness and collectivistic powerlessness corrupts: how power and cultural orientation influence corruption.

Evidence from individualistic cultures suggests that power corrupts. Using a goals-based perspective, here we argue that power and culture jointly predict corrupt attitudes and behavior. Four studies (N = 447) and one meta-analysis were conducted to test these hypotheses. Study 1 investigated the joint effects of power and individuals' cultural orientations on corruption proclivity. Studies 2 and 3 assessed if power and cultural orientations affect actual corrupt behaviors (i.e. abuse of discretion in Study 2 and bribe-taking in Study 3). Study 4 tested the hypothesis at a national level, using monocultural samples both in the UK and China. The results consistently showed that the effects of power on corruption depend on culture: for collectivistic individual orientations and cultures, holding power predicts less corruption than lacking power; in contrast, holding power predicts more corruption for individualist orientations and cultures. Our findings represent the first direct experimental and correlational evidence regarding the links between power, culture, and corruption.

We Need Tough Brothers and Sisters in a Tight World: Cultural Tightness Leads to a Preference for Dominant and Muscular Leaders.

Cultural tightness is characterized by strong norms and harsh punishments for deviant behaviors. We hypothesized that followers in tight (vs. loose) cultures would more strongly prefer muscular leaders. This hypothesis was confirmed across seven studies (N = 1,615) employing samples from the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. Using actual political leaders, we demonstrated that the tighter the state's culture was, the more muscular the elected governor was (Study 1). Temporarily situating participants in a tight (vs. loose) culture made them select a leader higher on muscularity but not on body fat, and the effects obtained occurred for both male and female leaders (Studies 2-3B). In addition, we demonstrated the mediating role of authoritarianism and a preference for a dominant leadership in this process (Studies 4-5B). These results demonstrate the importance of considering the interface between culture and the physical appearance of leaders.

Does power magnify the expression of dispositions?

Conventional wisdom holds that power holders act more in line with their dispositions than do people who lack power. Drawing on principles of construct accessibility, we propose that this is the case only when no alternative constructs are activated. In three experiments, we assessed participants' chronic dispositions and subsequently manipulated participants' degree of power. Participants then either were or were not primed with alternative (i.e., inaccessible or counterdispositional) constructs. When no alternatives were activated, the responses of power holders--perceptions of other people (Experiment 1), preferences for charitable donations (Experiment 2), and strategies in an economic game (Experiment 3)--were more in line with their chronically accessible constructs than were the responses of low-power participants. However, when alternatives had been activated, power holders' responses were no longer more congruent with their dispositions than were the responses of low-power participants. We propose a single mechanism according to which power increases reliance on accessible constructs--that is, constructs that easily come to mind-regardless of whether these constructs are chronically or temporarily accessible.

Cheating at the Top: Trait Dominance Explains Dishonesty More Consistently Than Social Power.

Power has long been associated with dishonesty. Here, we examined the contributions of personal and structural factors associated with power. Across five studies (N = 1,366), we tested the hypothesis that being dominant, more than having power and felt prestige, predicts dishonesty in incentivized tasks, moral disengagement, and breaking of Covid-19 containment rules. Dominance and dishonesty were positively associated (Study 1). Furthermore, dominance contributed to the positive relationship between occupational power and dishonesty in natural settings (Studies 2 and 5). Different types of power had inconsistent effects on dishonesty (Studies 3 and 4). Prestige was unrelated to dishonesty. Dominant individuals were overrepresented at the top, suggesting that the association between power and dishonesty may derive from self-selection processes, rather than power itself.

Power's mission: impact and the quest for goal achievement.

This article discusses evidence linking power to purpose: that of having an impact in the social environment and carrying out individual or collective aims and desires. First, it highlights the role of goals during the emergence and the exercise of power. Accordingly, it suggests that typical power's mission is to strive for social or personal objectives in social contexts. This includes social influence goals, organizational or personal agendas. Secondly, the article describes how power affects goal-related strategies and cognitive inclinations. Evidence suggests that power triggers prioritization and facilitates the pursuit of any salient goals, filtered by personal values and inclinations of the powerholder. Thirdly, the article examines powerholders' effectiveness of goal pursuit, including their performance on tangible social tasks. Finally, the article ends with a discussion on non-intended consequences of the power-goal links in particular in the social domain.

Power and affordances: when the situation has more power over powerful than powerless individuals.

Six studies examined how power affects responses to situational affordances. Participants were assigned to a powerful or a powerless condition and were exposed to various situations that afford different classes of behavior. Study 1 examined behavior intentions for weekdays and weekends. Studies 2 and 3 focused on responses to imaginary social and work situations. Study 4 examined planned behavior for winter and summer days. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 examined behavior and attention in the presence of situation-relevant and irrelevant information. Consistently across these studies, powerful individuals acted more in situation-consistent ways, and less in situation-inconsistent ways, compared with powerless individuals. These findings are interpreted as a result of the greater tendency for powerful individuals to process information selectively in line with the primary factors that drive cognition, such as affordances. One consequence of these findings is that powerful individuals change behavior across situations more than powerless individuals.

When subjective experiences matter: power increases reliance on the ease of retrieval.

Past research on power focused exclusively on declarative knowledge and neglected the role of subjective experiences. Five studies tested the hypothesis that power increases reliance on the experienced ease or difficulty that accompanies thought generation. Across a variety of targets, such as attitudes, leisure-time satisfaction, and stereotyping, and with different operationalizations of power, including priming, trait dominance, and actual power in managerial contexts, power consistently increased reliance on the ease of retrieval. These effects remained 1 week later and were not mediated by mood, quality of the retrieved information, or number of counterarguments. These findings indicate that powerful individuals construe their judgments on the basis of momentary subjective experiences and do not necessarily rely on core attitudes or prior knowledge, such as stereotypes.

Power and goal pursuit.

Powerful individuals more easily acquire desired outcomes compared to powerless individuals. The authors argue that these differences can partly be attributed to self-regulation. The effects of power on the ability to act in a goal-consistent manner were analyzed across different phases of goal pursuit. Study 1 examined goal setting, Study 2 focused on the initiation of goal-directed action, Study 3 examined persistence and flexibility, and Study 4 assessed responses to good opportunities for goal pursuit and the role of implementation intentions. Consistently across studies, power facilitated prioritization and goal-consistent behavior. Power had, however, independent effects from implementation intentions. Consequences for performance are discussed.

Doing many things at a time: Lack of power decreases the ability to multitask.

Three studies investigated the effects of power on the ability to pursue multiple, concomitant goals, also known as multitasking. It was predicted that powerless participants will show lower multitasking ability than control and powerful participants. Study 1 focused on self-reported ability to multitask in a sample of executives and subordinate employees. Studies 2 and 3 investigated the ability to dual-task and to switch between tasks, respectively, using dual-task and task-switching paradigms. Across the studies, powerless individuals were less able to effectively multitask compared with control and powerful participants, suggesting that the detrimental effects of lack of power extend beyond single-task environments, shown in past research, into multitasking environments. Underlying mechanisms are discussed.

Power boosts reliance on preferred processing styles.

A significant amount of research has proposed that power leads to heuristic and category based information processing, however, the evidence is often contradictory. We propose the novel idea that power magnifies chronically accessible information processing styles which can contribute to either systematic or heuristic processing. We examine heuristic (vs. systematic) processing in association with the need for closure. The results of three studies and a meta-analysis supported these claims. Power increased heuristic information processing, manifested in the recognition of schema consistent information, in the use of stereotypical information to form impressions and decreased the complexity of categorical representations, but only for those participants who, by default, processed information according to simplified heuristics, i.e., are high in need for closure. For those who prefer this processing style less, i.e., low in need for closure, power led to the opposite effects. These findings suggest that power licenses individuals to rely on their dominant information processing strategies, and that power increases interpersonal variability.

Self-image threat decreases stereotyping: The role of motivation toward closure.

Some prior research indicated that self-image threat may lead people to stereotyping and prejudiced evaluations of others. Other studies found that self-image threat may promote less stereotypical thinking and unprejudiced behavior. In a series of three studies, we demonstrate that self-image threat may lead to either more or less stereotypical perception of the outgroup depending on the level of the individuals` motivation toward closure (NFC). The results reveal that when individuals high (vs. low) in NFC perceived a member of an outgroup, they are less likely to use stereotypical traits if their self-image had been threatened by negative feedback (Study 1) or if they had imagined an example of their own immoral activity (Studies 2 and 3). Moreover, our results demonstrate that the fear of invalidity resulting from self-image threat induction is responsible for the foregoing effects (Study 3). These results are discussed in light of theories of motivational readiness and lay epistemics.

I can, I do, and so I like: From power to action and aesthetic preferences.

The current work tested the hypothesis that power increases reliance on experiences of motor fluency in forming aesthetic preferences. In 4 experiments, participants reported their aesthetic preferences regarding a variety of targets (pictures, movements, objects, and letters). Experiments 1, 2, and 3 manipulated power and motor fluency (via motoric resonance, extraocular muscle training, and dominant hand restriction). Experiment 4 manipulated power and assessed chronic interindividual differences in motor fluency. Across these experiments, power consistently increased reliance on motor fluency in aesthetic preference judgments. This finding was not mediated by differences in mood, judgment certainty, perceived task-demands or task-enjoyment, and derived from the use of motor simulations rather than from power differences in the acquisition of motor experiences. This is the first demonstration suggesting that power changes the formation of preference judgments as a function of motor fluency experiences. The implications of this research for the links between power and action, as well as the understanding of fluency processes are discussed.

Effects of power on perceived and objective group variability: evidence that more powerful groups are more variable.

The perception of group variability is affected by social power and status. Three different mechanisms may be responsible for these effects: (a) the power of the perceiver affects perceived group variability; (b) the power of the perceived group affects its perceived variability; and (c) the power of the group affects its actual variability. Two studies are reported to tease apart these three mechanisms and provide support for the third. In the first study, high- and low-power groups interacted and subsequently judged each other. In the second study, participants observed and rated the Study 1 groups, either knowing their power relationship or not. Results suggest that members of high-power groups manifest greater interpersonal variability than members of low-power groups.

Lack of power enhances visual perceptual discrimination.

Powerless individuals face much challenge and uncertainty. As a consequence, they are highly vigilant and closely scrutinize their social environments. The aim of the present research was to determine whether these qualities enhance performance in more basic cognitive tasks involving simple visual feature discrimination. To test this hypothesis, participants performed a series of perceptual matching and search tasks involving colour, texture, and size discrimination. As predicted, those primed with powerlessness generated shorter reaction times and made fewer eye movements than either powerful or control participants. The results indicate that the heightened vigilance shown by powerless individuals is associated with an advantage in performing simple types of psychophysical discrimination. These findings highlight, for the first time, an underlying competency in perceptual cognition that sets powerless individuals above their powerful counterparts, an advantage that may reflect functional adaptation to the environmental challenge and uncertainty that they face.

Feeling socially powerless makes you more prone to bumping into things on the right and induces leftward line bisection error.

Social power affects the manner in which people view themselves and act toward others, a finding that has attracted broad interest from the social and political sciences. However, there has been little interest from those within cognitive neuroscience. Here, we demonstrate that the effects of power extend beyond social interaction and invoke elementary spatial biases in behavior consistent with preferential hemispheric activation. In particular, participants who felt relatively powerless, compared with those who felt more powerful, were more likely to bisect horizontal lines to the left of center, and bump into the right-hand (as opposed to the left-hand) side when walking through a narrow passage. These results suggest that power induces hemispheric differences in visuomotor behavior, indicating that this ubiquitous phenomenon affects not only how we interact with one another, but also how we interact with the physical world.