Behaviour variability and the Situated Focus Theory of Power

Abstract

Power often affects judgement and behaviour differently in different contexts. The present chapter proposes the Situated Focus Theory of Power in an attempt to explain the greater variability in the behaviour and judgements of powerful compared to powerless individuals. It is proposed that power increases attunement to the situation by means of selective attention and processing flexibility. Factors that drive cognition such as motivation (e.g., needs, goals, expectancies), inner experiences (e.g., feelings, ease of retrieval), as well as properties of the environment (e.g., affordances), guide more unequivocally the responses of powerful compared to powerless individuals. Powerful individuals process more extensively information that is relevant compared to information that is irrelevant to these factors, whereas powerless individuals attend more equally to different types of information. These differences in processing focus affect content-free aspects of behaviour. Specifically, power promotes readiness to act, prioritisation, and behaviour variability across situations.

Keywords :

• Behaviour variability
• Flexibility
• Inhibition
• Power
• Selective attention
• Situated cognition

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the ESRC grant RES-000-22-1217 and the British Academy grant SG-44008, UK. I would like to thank Eliot Smith, Richard Crisp, Roger Giner-Sorolla, Christos Halkiopoulos, Mario Weick, and Arnaud Wisman for comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

Notes

¹One exception may occur when the environment is the strongest source of action control. Powerless individuals are affected by multiple influences. Nevertheless, the outcome of this processing orientation is not necessarily expressed in greater actual variability in judgement and behaviour in these individuals compared to powerful individuals. This occurs because judgement and action are often impaired by lack of selectivity in information processing (see Kuhl, 1992; Posner & Snyder, 1975). For example, although powerless individuals consistently attend to individuating information about other individuals (see Fiske & Dépret, 1996; Goodwin et al., 2000), this does not translate into more individuating social judgements (see Overbeck & Park, 2001, 2006; see also Vescio et al., 2003). Similarly, even though powerless individuals seize more information during goal pursuit, they initiate less action, engage less in goal-consistent behaviour, and are less flexible in the means used to attain a goal (Guinote, 2007a; see also Galinsky et al., 2003). Without selective processing, the responses of powerless individuals remain ambiguous and less clear to external observers.

²These results were replicated when participants were asked to suppress a meaningless construct (i.e., when they were asked to stop thinking about a white bear; see Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987). Powerful individuals therefore generally show stronger rebound effects after suppressing unwanted thoughts, compared to powerless individuals.