scholarly journals The influence of social power on neural responses to emotional conflict

PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e11267
Author(s):  
Xueling Ma ◽  
Entao Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Low Power ◽  
Stroop Task ◽  
High Power ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Major Power ◽  
Emotional Conflict ◽  
Fearful Faces ◽  
Emotional Face

Background Major power theories assume that social power can play an important role in an individual’s goal-related behaviors. However, the specific psychological mechanisms through which this occurs remain unclear. Some studies suggested that having power enhanced individuals’ goal-related behaviors, by contrast, other studies suggested that low-power individuals were associated with a greater performance in goal-directed tasks. We were particularly interested in how social power changes individuals’ goal-related behaviors during an emotional face-word Stroop task. Method Social power was primed by asking participants to recall a past situation in which they were in a position of power (high-power individuals), or a situation in which they were lacking power (low-power individuals). Afterward, participants were asked to complete an emotional face-word Stroop task. In the task, words representing specific emotions were written in a prominent red color across a face, and these words and facial expressions were either congruent or incongruent. The participant’s task was to judge the emotion of the face while ignoring the red emotional words. Results Our behavioral data showed that these individuals displayed faster reaction time and better accuracy in congruent conditions, slower reaction time for fearful faces and worse accuracy for happy faces in both incongruent and congruent conditions. The event-related potential analyses showed that, compared with low-power individuals, high-power individuals showed greater P1 amplitudes when faced with emotional stimuli (both incongruent and congruent conditions), indicating that power affects individuals’ attention in the early sensory processing of emotional stimuli. For the N170 component, low-power individuals showed more negative amplitudes when facing emotional stimuli, indicated that low-power individuals paid more attention to the construct information of emotional stimuli. For the N450 component, compared with congruent conditions, incongruent conditions elicited more negative amplitudes for both high- and low-power individuals. More importantly, fearful faces provoked enhanced P1 amplitudes in incongruent conditions than in congruent conditions only for low-power individuals, while, happy faces elicited larger P1 amplitudes in congruent conditions than in incongruent conditions only for high-power individuals. The findings suggested that during the initial stage of stimuli processing low-power individuals are more sensitive to negative stimuli than high-power individuals. Conclusion These findings provided electrophysiological evidence that the differences in the emotional conflict process between high- and low-power individuals mainly lies in the early processing stages of emotional information. Furthermore, evidence from P1 and N170 showed that there was also a redistribution of attentional resources in low-power individuals.

Emotional conflict occurs at an early stage: Evidence from the emotional face–word Stroop task

2010 ◽  
Vol 478 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiang-ru Zhu ◽  
Hui-jun Zhang ◽  
Ting-ting Wu ◽  
Wen-bo Luo ◽  
Yue-jia Luo
Keyword(s):  
Stroop Task ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Emotional Conflict ◽  
Emotional Face

scholarly journals How Social Power Affects the Processing of Angry Expressions: Evidence From Behavioral and Electrophysiological Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Entao Zhang ◽  
Xueling Ma ◽  
Ruiwen Tao ◽  
Tao Suo ◽  
Huang Gu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
High Power ◽  
Late Stage ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Target Power ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Electroencephalogram Eeg

With the help of event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study used an oddball paradigm to investigate how both individual and target power modulate neural responses to angry expressions. Specifically, participants were assigned into a high-power or low-power condition. Then, they were asked to detect a deviant angry expression from a high-power or low-power target among a series of neutral expressions, while behavioral responses and electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded. The behavioral results showed that high-power individuals responded faster to detect angry expressions than low-power individuals. The ERP analysis showed that high-power individuals showed larger P3 amplitudes in response to angry expressions than low-power individuals did. Target power increased the amplitudes of the P1, VPP, N3, and P3 in response to angry expressions did, but decreased the amplitudes of the N1 and N170 in response to angry expressions. The present study extended previous studies by showing that having more power could enhance individuals’ neural responses to angry expressions in the late-stage processes, and individuals could show stronger neural responses to angry expressions from high-power persons in both the early‐ and late-stage processes.

Induced Social Power Improves Visual Working Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt Hadar ◽  
Roy Luria ◽  
Nira Liberman
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Low Power ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
High Power ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Filtering Efficiency ◽  
Sense Of Power

The possibility that social power improves working memory relative to conditions of powerlessness has been invoked to explain why manipulations of power improve performance in many cognitive tasks. Yet, whether power facilitates working memory performance has never been tested directly. In three studies, we induced high or low sense of power using the episodic recall task and tested participants’ visual working memory capacity. We found that working memory capacity estimates were higher in the high-power than in the low-power condition in the standard change-detection task (Study 1), in a variation of the task that introduced distractors alongside the targets (Study 2), and in a variation that used real-world objects (Study 3). Studies 2 and 3 also tested whether high power improved working memory relative to low power by enhancing filtering efficiency, but did not find support for this hypothesis. We discuss implications for theories of both power and working memory.

scholarly journals The impact of social power on the evaluation of offensive jokes

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Knegtmans ◽  
Wilco W. van Dijk ◽  
Marlon Mooijman ◽  
Nina van Lier ◽  
Sacha Rintjema ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
High Power ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe current research examined whether social power affects what people find funny. In two experiments, participants’ psychological state of social power was experimentally manipulated and their evaluations of offensive jokes were assessed. Results showed that participants in a psychological state of high power – as compared to low power – evaluated offensive jokes as less inappropriate, less offensive, and funnier. Mediation analyses showed that power increased the funniness of offensive jokes through decreasing the perceived inappropriateness of these jokes. Implications for research on power and humor are discussed.

scholarly journals Magnitude estimation is influenced by social power

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Huber ◽  
Johannes Bloechle ◽  
Tanja Dackermann ◽  
Annika Scholl ◽  
Kai Sassenberg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
High Power ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Line Length ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Role Assignment ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
Individual Traits

The action-specific perception account suggests that how people perceive the environment depends on their ability to act on it, assuming that estimation is influenced by inter-individual traits, but also by situated states. Moreover, several studies revealed that social power affects basic cognitive processes and even influences the way we perceive the physical environment. In the present study, we examined whether social power also influences estimation performance of spatial magnitudes (i.e., line estimation). Participants estimated the line length of a given number in an increase and a decrease condition, after (low versus high) social power had been manipulated between participants via role assignment. In the increase condition, low-power participants overestimated line lengths, whereas such a bias was not observed for high-power participants. In contrast, the power manipulation did not affect performance in the decrease condition, suggesting that proportion-judgement strategies might have been applied here, thereby reducing the overall bias in line estimations. Our findings support the notion that social power has an impact on the perception of the physical environment and that perception can depend on personal as well as situational factors. Moreover, the present research suggests that high (compared to low) social power may help people to overcome biases in overestimating magnitudes.

Less Power, Greater Conflict

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra C. Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
High Power ◽  
Goal Pursuit ◽  
Goal Conflict ◽  
Personal Goals ◽  
Multiple Goals ◽  
Objective Performance ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

Abstract. Power facilitates goal pursuit, but how does power affect the way people respond to conflict between their multiple goals? Our results showed that higher trait power was associated with reduced experience of conflict in scenarios describing multiple goals (Study 1) and between personal goals (Study 2). Moreover, manipulated low power increased individuals’ experience of goal conflict relative to high power and a control condition (Studies 3 and 4), with the consequence that they planned to invest less into the pursuit of their goals in the future. With its focus on multiple goals and individuals’ experiences during goal pursuit rather than objective performance, the present research uses new angles to examine power effects on goal pursuit.

AlInAs/GaInAs on InP HEMTs for low power supply voltage operation of high power-added efficiency microwave amplifiers

1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (15) ◽  
pp. 1324 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.E. Larson ◽  
M.M. Matloubian ◽  
J.J. Brown ◽  
A.S. Brown ◽  
M. Thompson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
High Power ◽  
Power Supply ◽  
Supply Voltage ◽  
Power Supply Voltage ◽  
Power Added Efficiency ◽  
Microwave Amplifiers
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