The Effect Of Mortality Salience On Explicit And Implicit Power Motivation

Power is a widespread social phenomenon,which is closely related to people’s daily life.power often provides greater status and material wealth,Power can make people happier or live longer.However,sometimes power has a variety of negative effects,and those who have power will perceive others in a stereotyped way,forming a homogeneity impression and neglecting the heterogeneity of others,and take more oppression and coercion actions,and allocate more benefits to themselves.Therefore,it is necessary to study the influential factors of power motivation so as to correctly and effectively intervene individual motivation.Studies have shown that individual difference is one of the factors that influences power motivation.Some scholars believe that situational factors are also important.Belmi P and Pfeffer J(2016)have showed that mortality salience can enhance individual’s power motivation.However,we don’t know whether this influence exists in Chinese cultural background.Therefore,this study will examine the impact of mortality salience on power motivation in Chinese cultural context.In this paper,three experimental studies are conducted to explore the impact of mortality salience(MS)on explicit and implicit power motivation by using the situational experimentmethod,and further examine the mediation role of the sense of control in the influence of mortality salience to the explicit power motivation.The results are as follows:(1)MS leads to a significant increase in the explicit power motivation of the individual.However,there is a gender difference in this effect.After MS,the male’s explicit power motivation increases significantly,and the female subjects show no significant change in power motivation.(2)There is no significant change in the motives of the individuals who hope to gain power orfear of losing power,and there is no significant change in the composite score of implicit power motivation.Therefore,the effect of MS on implicit power motivation is not significant in this study.(3)Sense of control plays a complete mediating role between mortality salience and explicitpower motivation.That is to say,MS affect explicit power motivation through mediation of control.