The Neural-basis Of Social Power Execution: Evidence From Eeg And FMRI

Social power always means manipulating or controlling,and it is one of the most critical concepts in social science, which has a major impact on our daily life. There are some facts had been found by former studies of social power. One is the perceive and representation of social power were stretched in a vertical space, specifically the position and the height of a vertical space. Another is that social power significantly influence the cognition, the affection and the social behaviors afterwards. But few research was focused on the basic core process of social power, which we call it power execution. In this paper, the neural-basis of power execution has been researched with EEG method and fMRI separately in two studies.The purpose of study 1 is to explore the neural mechanism of social power execution by an electroencephalogram method. We used an improved paradigm of event-recall and collected the EEG data from 32 participants. The result of spectrum analysis in the alpha band shows that a lower activity of alpha rhythm occurs in the left prefrontal cortex while participants doing a power-executing task, as well as no significant difference of alpha rhythm activity was found between bilateral prefrontal cortex while participants doing a power-executed task. The further source localization analysis in alpha band reveals that the left medial frontal gyrus (BA 9/10) and left anterior cingulate cortex (BA 32) were activated in the power-executing task, and the right medial frontal gyrus (BA 10) and right anterior cingulate cortex (BA 32) were activated in the power-executed task.The study 2 aims to exam the neural-basis of social power execution via a functional magnetic resonance imaging. We reformed the traditional paradigm of role-play into a multi-round imaginative role-play to adapt the fMRI conditions. And 21 volunteers participated in this experiment. As the result, left precentral gyrus (BA 3/4) and postcentral gyrus (BA 3) as well as bilateral occipitotemporal gyrus (BA 19/37) were activated during the power-executing task. Besides, the bilateral occipitotemporal gyrus (BA 19/37), left medial frontal gyrus (BA 9/10) and left pars opercularis (BA 44/13) were activated during the power-executed task.As a main conclusion, our research has found that the sensorimotor cortex and the prefrontal area were involved in the social power executing/executed process. The previous one confirmed the hypothesis of embodied cognition theory. The abstract behavior of power execution is cognited as some embodied manipulating or controlling. And the latter one confirmed the approach-inhibition theory of power. It explained the physiology origin of the approach or inhibition behavior under specific power condition. What's more, the results predict that parietal lobe might have some social function and that occipitotemporal gyrus is responsible to the judge of power hierarchy. Instead of the model of prefrontal lateralization, we argue that social power execution is a more complex process,and the whole brain were all involved in, which we call it the whole brain model of social power execution.