Ma Xueling, Zhang Entao
College of Psychology Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
Henan University, Institute of Cognition, Brain and Health, Kaifeng, China.
PeerJ. 2021 Apr 12;9:e11267. doi: 10.7717/peerj.11267. eCollection 2021.
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.
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.
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.
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.
主要权力理论认为，社会权力在个体与目标相关的行为中可发挥重要作用。然而，其发生的具体心理机制仍不清楚。一些研究表明，拥有权力会增强个体与目标相关的行为，相比之下，其他研究则表明，低权力个体在目标导向任务中表现更佳。我们特别感兴趣的是，在情绪面孔-单词Stroop任务中，社会权力如何改变个体与目标相关的行为。
通过要求参与者回忆过去处于权力地位的情况（高权力个体）或缺乏权力的情况（低权力个体）来启动社会权力。之后，要求参与者完成一项情绪面孔-单词Stroop任务。在该任务中，代表特定情绪的单词以醒目的红色写在一张脸上，这些单词和面部表情要么一致，要么不一致。参与者的任务是判断面孔的情绪，同时忽略红色的情绪单词。
我们的行为数据表明，这些个体在一致条件下反应时间更快、准确性更高，在不一致和一致条件下，面对恐惧面孔时反应时间较慢，面对快乐面孔时准确性较差。事件相关电位分析表明，与低权力个体相比，高权力个体在面对情绪刺激时（不一致和一致条件下）P1波幅更大，表明权力在情绪刺激的早期感觉加工中影响个体的注意力。对于N170成分，低权力个体在面对情绪刺激时波幅更负，表明低权力个体更关注情绪刺激的结构信息。对于N450成分，与一致条件相比，不一致条件在高权力和低权力个体中均引发更负的波幅。更重要的是，只有低权力个体在不一致条件下恐惧面孔引发的P1波幅比一致条件下增强，而只有高权力个体在一致条件下快乐面孔引发的P1波幅比不一致条件下更大。研究结果表明，在刺激处理的初始阶段，低权力个体比高权力个体对负面刺激更敏感。
这些发现提供了电生理证据，表明高权力和低权力个体在情绪冲突过程中的差异主要在于情绪信息的早期处理阶段。此外，来自P1和N170的证据表明，低权力个体的注意力资源也存在重新分配。
