Abstract
Elevated power increases the psychological distance one feels from others, and this distance, according to construal level theory (Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003), should lead to more abstract information processing. Thus, high power should be associated with more abstract thinking-focusing on primary aspects of stimuli and detecting patterns and structure to extract the gist, as well as categorizing stimuli at a higher level-relative to low power. In 6 experiments involving both conceptual and perceptual tasks, priming high power led to more abstract processing than did priming low power, even when this led to worse performance. Experiment 7 revealed that in line with past neuropsychological research on abstract thinking, priming high power also led to greater relative right-hemispheric activation.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 578-596 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Journal of personality and social psychology |
Volume | 90 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2006 |
Keywords
- Abstract thinking
- Construal level theory
- Hemispheric activation
- Priming
- Social power
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Sociology and Political Science