Power and perception
A recent article in Psychological Science by Adam Galinsky and others entitled ‘Power and Perspectives Not Taken’ is a fascinating study about the effects of power on perception. The team conducted four experiments, before each the participants were primed with high-power or low-power. In the first, participants were asked to draw an E on their forehead, those with high power were more likely to draw it correctly, while the low would adopt the perspective of the other, thus drawing it backwards. The next two, participants were given a message and asked to interpret how a friend might perceive the message. In the second the message seemed sincere, while privileged background knowledge about the speaker suggested sarcasm; in the third, it seems sarcastic while being sincere. Both cases showed high-power people to be less likely to take into account that other people did not have access to their privileged information. The last experiment involved the participants identifying expressions of happiness, fear, anger or sadness from a set of 24 images. The high-power were more likely to misidentify the emotion. All together, it seems that people with a lot of power see the world very different from the rest, more solipsistically in that they fail to consider the minds of others, instead projecting on them their own privileged states, which may in turn account for why they are worse at empathy. This could have "wide-ranging implications, from business to politics." says Galinsky. "Presidents who preside over a divided government (and thus have reduced power) might be psychologically predisposed to consider alternative viewpoints more readily than those that preside over unified governments." The complete study is up on the Northwestern site, get it quick should they take it down.
dude, this is totally fascinating… happy to see you posting again
Comment by josh — January 12, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
dude, this is totally fascinating… glad to see you posting again
Comment by josh — January 12, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
dude, this is totally fascinationg. good to see you posting again
Comment by joshua — January 12, 2007 @ 10:57 pm