Goal As A Moderator Of The Effect Of Power On Interpersonal Sensitivity

Power, ubiquitous and influential, is always the focal point of the social science. How power affects interpersonal interaction in term of cognition and behavior has moved to the forefront of many social psychologist for the past twenty years. As interpersonal sensitivity is close related to the effect of interpersonal interaction, it is of importance to figure out the relation of power and interpersonal sensitivity. However, researchers cannot reach a consensus on it. Some researches have shown that goal can moderate the effect of power. On the basis of above findings, we propose that goal moderate the effect of power on interpersonal sensitivity.In our study, primed power using role playing, participants are assigned to the more "people-oriented" or more "product-oriented" goals, and then administered the DANVA-2Adult Facial Expressions Test which is used to assess the interpersonal sensitivity. The results confirm that high power people are more interpersonal sensitive than low power people with the "people-oriented" goal, while not support the hypothesis that high power people are less interpersonal sensitive than low power people with the "product-orient" goal. Participant’s interpersonal sensitivity in high power condition and low power condition are not significant different with the latter goal. We rule out the alternative explanations for our result with special study design and expectancy check. The result demonstrate that the goal moderate the effect of power on interpersonal sensitivity. Our findings extend the theory of approach/inhibition of power by setting the boundary of the effect of power on interpersonal sensitivity.Finally, we discuss the limitation of our study in term of study design and the manipulation and assessment of the constructs, and offer some promising suggestion for future studies.