The cognitive basis of social power

Social power refers to the amount of control that an individual feels he/she has over another. A key attribute that sets apart powerful and powerless people in social settings is their capacity to act. Powerful individuals are quicker to both set and implement goals, and appear more overt, willing and direct in their actions. By contrast, powerless people are more deliberative, see less opportunity for action, and engage in action more passively. The aim of the present study is to elucidate the cognitive processes that underlie these behavioural differences. In principle, there are at least two ways in which heightened power could facilitate action; (1) it could sharpen the ability to detect and perceive action cues in the environment, and (2) it could directly prime action processes related to the selection and execution of physical responses. The current study will explore these possibilities by first priming experimental participants to feel either powerful or powerless, and then measuring their performance on basic cognitive tasks that selectively tap different stages of the perceptual-motor cycle. The intended outcome will be to explain how, at a cognitive level, power affects action orientation, and more broadly, to generate new links between social and cognitive phenomena.