POWER IN CONTEXT: FURTHER INSIGHTS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONTEXT AND POWER

Financiador

Organização

Publicações

On power : cognitive underpinnings, cultural influences, and Person perception

Publication . Martinho De Almeida, Ana Filipa; Santos, Ana Sofia Correia dos, 1969-; Guinote, Ana, 1963-

Power relations are ubiquitous in societies as we know them. A boss can decide to give their employee the tasks they do not like whereas the employee does not have such freedom. Children often have their wished curbed by their parents who decide on many aspects of their lives for them. Whether someone has a great deal of power of lacks it impacts their freedom and behavioral possibilities greatly. This dissertation is about power-what it does to people, how it is affected by the culture we live in and how it affects person perception. This dissertation is organized in six chapters. The first constitutes the introduction, which lays ground for the empirical chapters which follow. The last, constitutes the conclusion, which ties up together the work done, reflects on it and proposes new research avenues. In between, there are four empirical chapters. The first of these deals with the impact power has on the self, namely, on the cognitive processes. The next looks at how culture can affect power states. The last two focus on person perception and change the perspective by focusing on how the power of the actor affects their perception. One of the open questions in the power literature concerns how it affects selfregulation. Some findings suggest power leads to impulsive, unreflective behavior while others suggest power leads to controlled, thoughtful behavior. In Chapter 2 we hypothesized power leads to relying on automatic processing strategies by default, while, simultaneously, leading to more controlled behavior through self-regulation when the powerful are motivated to do so. We test that hypothesis by manipulating power in a between participants design and having participants perform a task which correct responding required self-regulation. Experiment 1 yielded results in line with the literature in that the powerless demonstrated having a more focused processing of information. In line with the literature, that could be the case if the high power participants were not engaged enough. In order to tackle that possibility, in Experiment 2 we manipulated motivation. As the data was insufficient for analysis, in Experiment 3 we aimed at replicating Experiment 1's procedure ipsis verbis. Again, data was insufficient for analysis. Given the lack of understanding concerning the data from the last two experiments we moved to the next question, which Chapter 3 is about, which emerged during attempts at manipulating power both previous to and simultaneously with the experiments presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 changes the topic from the cognitive processes underlying high and low power individuals to the impact of cultural influences on the meaning of power. As a response to many failed attempts at manipulating power in the laboratory, the authors started wondering whether moderators are playing a role. As most of the literature on power uses samples other than Portuguese, we wonder if that is the difference explaining our manipulation difficulties of this variable. Indeed, Portugal differs from most countries where power is studied and tested in aspects that should be key to power perception. In this chapter, we present many failed attempts at manipulating power in Portugal including one manipulation which was replicated in the United Kingdom and was effective. Additionally, we present two experiments on the implicit attitudes towards power in Portugal. We argue that power manipulations are sensitive to cultural differences and, as such, these should be taken into account when manipulating power. In Chapter 4 we look at a totally different facet of power—how having it or lacking it impacts perception by observing others. Specifically, we focus on spontaneous trait inferences, that is, how one spontaneously infers traits from others behavior depending on this other person's power. In three experiments we show that being perceived as lacking power leads to differential spontaneous trait inferences from having it or being out of a power relationship. Namely, in Experiment 1, whereas perceivers refrained from inferring negatively valenced traits from high power and power irrelevant others, that was not the case for powerless others, who were perceived as holding negative personality traits as a consequence of their misbehavior. Experiment 2 assured the effect happens spontaneously. And Experiment 3 assured it is not specific to a certain power definition by replicating it with a different power manipulation. Chapter 5 keeps exploring the impact someone's power has on their perception. It does so by looking at behavior and trait expectations of high and low power actors. And it dissects them into the two basic personality domains—the social and the intellectual. Across Experiments 1-3, low power targets were expected to display intellectually inferior behaviors or perceived as having intellectually inferior personality traits than their high power counterparts. Sometimes, they were also perceived to be socially better than their high power counterparts. That was the case irrespectively of what they have done before (Experiment 2) or of how their power roles were acquired (Experiment 3). However, when the context deems the social context important, low power actors were perceived as being socially worse than the high power actors (Experiment 4). Results are discussed in light of the system justification theory.

2019Tese de doutoramento

Acesso restrito

Ver mais

How Your Power Affects My Impression of You

Publication . Orghian, Diana; de Almeida, Filipa; Jacinto, Sofia; Garcia-Marques, Leonel; Correia dos Santos, Ana Sofia

In the present article, we investigate how a person’s power affects the way we infer traits from their behavior. In Experiment 1, our results suggest that, when faced with behavioral descriptions about others, participants infer both positive and negative traits about powerless actors, whereas for powerful and control (power irrelevant) actors, only positive but no negative traits are inferred, an effect we call the benevolence bias. In the second experiment, (a) we replicate this effect, (b) we show that it does not depend on the specific traits used in Experiment 1, and (c) we show that it is also detected when an implicit measure of inferences is used. Experiment 3 further shows that this effect generalizes to a more generic power manipulation. Theoretical explanations for these findings are discussed.

2018-08-21Artigo científico

Acesso aberto

Ver mais

Entidade financiadora

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Número da atribuição

SFRH/BD/87044/2012