Research suggests that power makes us more susceptible to being proactive and making the first move (for instance, in negotiations). The last area of human psychology that is affected by power is the type of behaviours people engage in. And generally speaking, powerful persons experience more positive emotions and fewer negative ones. smiling when they really experience smiling). They are capable of influencing the emotions of others, and tend to make emotional displays only when they really experience emotions (e.g. Powerful individuals, on the other hand, tend to pay less attention to the emotions of others. For instance, research suggests that people who lack power become more attuned to others’ emotions, especially when living in the same physical space. Power has also been shown to affect the experience of emotions. The effect of power goes beyond the way we process information. Interestingly, it also decreased the sense of connectedness that men have with others, while it increases that sense in women. The effect of power goes beyond perspective taking, and research suggests that power leads people to use more stereotypes and increase the objectification of others.įinally, in research conducted with LSE colleague professor Tom Reader, we showed that power increased one’s sense of uniqueness and feeling different from others for both men and women. Results suggest that individuals in a powerful condition were less likely to draw a letter that was readable by their partner, thus suggesting that power reduces the capacity to take the perspective of the other. third-person perspective or perspective taking). first-person perspective, or no-perspective taking) or the perspective of the experimenter (i.e. He then asked them to draw a letter on their forehead, and looked at whether the drawn letter was from the perspective of the person writing the letter (i.e. In a cleverly designed experiment, Galinsky put participants in a position where they were either feeling powerful or less powerful. Research suggests that individuals get less distracted by peripheral information when asked to focus on tasks. They also tend to become more focused on their own internal states and emotions, and less on those of others.īut some of the most compelling research evidence that power affects the way we function psychologically comes from the work of Galinsky on power and perspective taking. becoming king with the sudden death of the incumbent), The first series of consequences take place on the way power holders process information from their surroundings. The process of acquiring power can be gradual (climbing through the hierarchy of a multinational corporation) or sudden (e.g. For instance, one can exert influence based on expertise, charisma, or by simply being able to grant someone a promotion.Īcquiring power comes with a series of psychological consequences. Following the work of French and Raven (1959), influence can as well come in multiple forms. Second, someone can be said to be powerful when she / he has the capacity to influence someone else, and stay uninfluenced by others. financial resources, or in a more primitive sense, land or food…) but can also be symbolic resources (e.g. First, a powerful person is one that has control over their own and others’ resources. Psychologists define power in multiple ways, but commonly accepted definitions converge towards two aspects of power. Let’s start by looking at the way psychologists define power. In fact, what is often occulted are the very consequences that power has on self-perception and various aspects of our psychological functioning. But there is more to individual and personality differences when it comes to understanding the behaviour of those in power. That is, we make what psychologists call a dispositional attribution. We often blame the behaviours of those who have power and abuse it on the individual and his or her personality.
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