Getting What You Want: Power Increases the Accessibility of Active Goals

Letitia Slabu , Ana Guinote

Power facilitates goal-directed behavior. Two studies, using different types of goals, examined the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this tendency. Participants, primed with power or powerlessness, performed lexical decision tasks that assessed the relative facilitation of goal-relevant constructs during goal striving and after goal attainment. Results showed that during goal striving powerful participants manifested an increased facilitation of goal-relevant constructs compared to other constructs, and this facilitation decreased immediately after goal completion. In contrast, their powerless counterparts showed less facilitation of goal constructs during goal striving and maintained goal accessibility after completion. These results are consistent with the effects of power on goal-directed behavior found in past research.

Mots clés: goal pursuit; attentional focus; power; self-regulation; accessibility

Domaines: Psychologie et comportements

Letitia Slabu, Ana Guinote. Getting What You Want: Power Increases the Accessibility of Active Goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2009, 46 (2), pp.344. ⟨10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.013⟩. ⟨hal-00746882⟩