Does Power Increase Self-Control? Episodic Priming May Not Provide the Answer

Abstract

Powerful people (e.g., political and business leaders) should be able to control their impulses and act in line with long-term rather than short-term interests. However, theories of power suggest different answers to the question whether the basic experience of feeling powerful decreases (e.g., Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) or increases self-control performance (e.g., Magee & Smith, 2013). We conducted a preregistered direct replication of the only experiment testing the effects of power on self-control (Joshi & Fast, 2013, Study 3). In contrast to the original results, social power, operationalized by episodic priming, did not affect temporal discounting. A possible explanation is the fact that the power priming failed to elevate participants' sense of power. Thus, the null findings challenge the power priming paradigm rather than the two theories from which opposite predictions were derived. In order to understand how power affects self-control, future research may need to rely on other manipulations. Keywords: Social power; self-control; power priming; temporal discounting; direct replication How does feeling powerful prepare individuals for exercising self-control, i.e. to pursue long-term goals? Laypeople seem to agree that powerful people such as organizational or political leaders should be particularly persistent, disciplined, and responsible (Lord, Foti, & Vader, 1984). Two influential theories in power research -the approach/ inhibition theory of power (Keltner et al., 2003) and the social distance theory of power (Magee & Smith, 2013) -make opposite predictions with regard to the effects of power on self-control.Within the framework of the approach/inhibition theory of power, Keltner and colleagues suggest that (1) high power activates the behavioral approach system which is sensitive to rewards and opportunities, and (2) low power activates the behavioral inhibition system which is sensitive to punishment, threat, and uncertainty. Briefly summarized, Keltner and colleagues propose that high power triggers approach-related positive affect, attention to rewards, automatic cognition, and disinhibited behavior, whereas reduced power activates inhibition-related negative affect, systematic cognition, and situationally constrained behavior. Accordingly, due to their heightened attention to rewards and their drive to experience these rewards immediately, powerful people should show relatively poor self-control.In contrast, the social distance theory of power (Magee & Smith, 2013) assumes that high-power individuals exhibit better self-control than low-power individuals. Magee and Smith propose that asymmetric dependence between two individuals gives rise to asymmetric experiences of social distance, with the high-power individual feeling more subjective distance than the low-power individual. Based on assumptions of construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010), the authors assume that because highpower individuals perceive larger social distance, they engage in more abstract mental representatio...

Does Power Reduce Temporal Discounting? Commentary on Joshi and Fast (2013)

“…We conducted a meta-analysis of experiments examining the effect of low versus high power on temporal discounting. This meta-analysis included our two close replications reported here, three additional replication studies we report in the Supplemental Material (Studies 3, 4, and 5), the four previously published replications (Duan et al, 2017, Studies 1 and 3;Heller & Ullrich, 2017;Tost et al, 2015, Experiment 2), and the target studies of these replications ( Joshi & Fast, 2013, Studies 1 and 3). Correlational studies (e.g., Duan et al, 2017, Study 2;Joshi & Fast, 2013, Study 4) were not included because our goal was to assess the causal evidence that power affects temporal discounting.…”

“…of Tibetan ethnicity (Study 3). Both Tost, Wade-Benzoni, and Johnson (2015, Experiment 2) and Heller and Ullrich (2017) produced null results. These inconsistent findings raise questions about the robustness of the effect of power on temporal discounting.…”

Zhang & Smith_Does Power Reduce Temporal Discounting

“…We conducted a meta-analysis of experiments examining the effect of low versus high power on temporal discounting, which included our two close replications reported here, three additional replication studies of ours reported in the supplemental materials, the four previously published replications (Duan et al, 2017, Studies 1 and 3;Heller & Ullrich, 2017;Tost et al, 2015, Experiment 2), and the target studies of these replications (Joshi & Fast (2013), Studies 1 & 3). Correlational studies (e.g., Joshi & Fast, 2013, Study 4;Duan et al, 2017, Study 2) were not included since our goal was to assess the causal evidence for power affecting temporal DOES POWER REDUCE TEMPORAL DISCOUNTING?…”

“…We found three papers reporting a total of four experiments that satisfied these criteria (Duan et al, 2017, Studies 1 and 3;Heller & Ullrich, 2017;Tost et al, 2015, Experiment 2). We also included Studies 1 and 3 of , the two direct replications reported in our paper (Studies 1 and 2), and the three replications with some procedural differences from the target studies reported in the supplemental materials (Studies 3-5).…”

“…and 3) are underpowered (Ns = 69, 78, and 80, respectively; power to detect the original effect: 64%, 70%, and 71%, respectively; power to detect a medium-sized (d = 0.5) effect: 53%, 59%, and 60%, respectively). 1 Heller and Ullrich's (2017) study suffered from differential attrition between conditions, with significantly more high-power participants (61%) dropping out of the study than low-power (50%) and control (32%) participants. Selective attrition introduces experimental confounds and violates the assumption of random assignment (Zhou & Fishbach, 2016).…”