The Experience versus the Expectations of Power: A Recipe for Altering the Effects of Power on Behavior

Power transforms consumer behavior. This research introduces a critical theoretical moderator of power's effects by promoting the idea that power is accompanied by both an experience (how it feels to have or lack power) and expectations (schemas and scripts as to how those with or without power behave). In some cases, the psychological experience of power predisposes people to behave one way, whereas attention to the expectations of power suggests behaving in another way. As a consequence, power's effects for consumer behavior can hinge on consumers' focus. Specifically, a focus on the experience or expectations of power critically moderates how power affects both information processing and status seeking. However, as the experience of power incites a desire to act, and the powerful are expected to act, power produces more action regardless of focus. These findings provide a new lens on power and have important implications for consumer behavior.

[1]  Derek D. Rucker,et al.  Desire to Acquire: Powerlessness and Compensatory Consumption , 2008 .

[2]  Simona Botti,et al.  Power and Choice , 2011, Psychological science.

[3]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Illusory Control , 2008, Psychological science.

[4]  Kelly E. See,et al.  The detrimental effects of power on confidence, advice taking, and accuracy , 2011 .

[5]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  8 Social Hierarchy: The Self‐Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status , 2008 .

[6]  Joe C Magee,et al.  From power to action. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Power: Past findings, present considerations, and future directions. , 2015 .

[8]  Derek D. Rucker,et al.  The Effect of Regulatory Depletion on Attitude Certainty , 2010 .

[9]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Power and consumer behavior: How power shapes who and what consumers value , 2012 .

[10]  Erik Hurst,et al.  Conspicuous Consumption and Race , 2007 .

[11]  Sara Kim,et al.  Gaming with Mr. Slot or Gaming the Slot Machine? Power, Anthropomorphism, and Risk Perception , 2011 .

[12]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Super Size Me: Product Size as a Signal of Status , 2012 .

[13]  A. Galinsky,et al.  The Good Life of the Powerful , 2013, Psychological science.

[14]  H. Kelley,et al.  The social psychology of groups , 1960 .

[15]  P. Zimbardo,et al.  On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: with special reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment. , 1973, Cognition.

[16]  Joe C Magee,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Power and Perspectives Not Taken , 2022 .

[17]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.324 Power, optimism, and risk-taking , 2022 .

[18]  Nira Liberman,et al.  Seven Principles of Goal Activation: A Systematic Approach to Distinguishing Goal Priming From Priming of Non-Goal Constructs , 2007, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[19]  Richard P. Larrick,et al.  Power, competitiveness, and advice taking: Why the powerful don’t listen , 2012 .

[20]  Thorstein Veblen,et al.  The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions , 2000 .

[21]  Francis J. Flynn,et al.  What breaks a leader: the curvilinear relation between assertiveness and leadership. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  John H. Ellard,et al.  Effect of arbitrarily assigned status labels on self-perceptions and social perceptions: The mere position effect. , 1986 .

[23]  Ying Zhang,et al.  How Power States Influence Consumers’ Perceptions of Price Unfairness , 2014 .

[24]  H. Markus,et al.  Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. , 1991 .

[25]  S. Worchel,et al.  Aggression and power restoration: The effects of identifiability and timing on aggressive behavior , 1978 .

[26]  Derek D. Rucker,et al.  Power and action orientation : power as a catalyst for consumer switching behavior , 2014 .

[27]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Promoting systematic processing in low-motivation settings: effect of incongruent information on processing and judgment. , 1991, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[28]  John T. Cacioppo,et al.  The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion , 1986, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

[29]  Derek D. Rucker,et al.  Conspicuous consumption versus utilitarian ideals: How different levels of power shape consumer behavior , 2009 .

[30]  Derek D. Rucker,et al.  The Orientation-Matching Hypothesis: An Emotion-Specificity Approach to Affect Regulation , 2010 .

[31]  J. Bargh,et al.  Automaticity of social behavior: direct effects of trait construct and stereotype-activation on action. , 1996, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[32]  Adam D. Galinsky,et al.  Power, Propensity to Negotiate, and Moving First in Competitive Interactions , 2007, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[33]  D. Rucker,et al.  The Accentuation Bias , 2010 .

[34]  R. Petty,et al.  The elaboration likelihood model , 2012 .

[35]  Katie A. Liljenquist,et al.  Power reduces the press of the situation: implications for creativity, conformity, and dissonance. , 2008, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[36]  Richard E Petty,et al.  The effects of message recipients' power before and after persuasion: a self-validation analysis. , 2007, Journal of personality and social psychology.