Does power make people less likely to consider others’ perspectives, or does responsibility matter?

Details

Considering another person’s perspective means recognizing that what they see, know or feel may differ from your own experience. The primary research examined this through four experiments and a separate correlational study.

In one experiment, participants prompted to feel high power were more likely than those prompted to feel low power to draw an E on their forehead facing themselves rather than an observer. In two other experiments, high-power participants were less likely to account for the fact that others lacked information they themselves possessed. A fourth experiment found lower accuracy in identifying others’ emotional expressions compared with a control group. The authors interpreted this last result as suggesting an impediment to empathy; the task did not directly establish how much empathy participants experienced. The correlational study also linked greater personal power with less consideration of others’ perspectives, but that association alone cannot establish causation.

A separate literature review reports that many laboratories found reduced consideration of others’ perspectives under power, while one laboratory found the opposite. It also reports support from many laboratories for a conditional explanation: power can increase consideration of others’ perspectives when powerful people feel responsible for others. Together, these sources support a context-dependent finding, not a rule that power always makes people less understanding. The abstracts do not provide effect sizes or enough methodological detail to assess how large or broadly applicable these effects are.