Power and Persuasion: Processes by Which Perceived Power Can Influence Evaluative Judgments

Abstract

The present review focuses on how power—as a perception regarding the self, the source of the message, or the message itself—affects persuasion. Contemporary findings suggest that perceived power can increase or decrease persuasion depending on the circumstances and thus might result in both short-term and long-term consequences for behavior. Given that perceptions of power can produce different, and even opposite, effects on persuasion, it might seem that any relationship is possible and thus prediction is elusive or impossible. In contrast, the present review provides a unified perspective to understand and organize the psychological literature on the relationship between perceived power and persuasion. To accomplish this objective, present review identifies distinct mechanisms by which perceptions of power can influence persuasion and discusses when these mechanisms are likely to operate. In doing so, this article provides a structured approach for studying power and persuasion via antecedents, consequences, underlying psychological processes, and moderators. Finally, the article also discusses how power can affect evaluative judgments more broadly.

Self-validation theory: An integrative framework for understanding when thoughts become consequential.

“…The implications of the meaning postulate extend beyond ease effects to other variables associated with default high validity. For example, head nodding is associated with agreement (Wells & Petty, 1980), smiling is a positive emotional sign associated with pleasantness or confidence (Paredes et al, 2013), and feeling powerful is often experienced as a desirable state (Briñol, Petty, Durso, & Rucker, 2017). Because the default meaning of these variables is typically positive and associated either with correctness or pleasantness, they often lead to one's salient thoughts being seen as more valid.…”

Persuasion at Diff erent Levels of Elaboration: Experimental Effects of Strength, Valence and Ego Depletion

“…The power of authorities has long been observed in the literature (for an extensive review, see Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). The mention of the professor, an authority fi gure, may have acted as a peripheral cue, guiding a peripheral attitude change (Briñol, Petty, Durso, & Rucker, 2017). With little participant motivation to elaborate the proposal, the professor's status could have had more weight on the evaluation, acting as a heuristic.…”

Are Positive Interventions Always Beneficial?

“…Indeed, some trends emphasize feeling powerful as a means of becoming more successful across different domains of life (Burgmer & Englich, 2012;Lammers et al, 2013;Michalak, et al, 2014;Nair et al, 2014;Peper et al, 2018). Rather than being inherently beneficial, persuasion science has revealed how the confidence that comes from feelings of power following thinking can magnify whatever mental content is accessible (Briñol, Petty, Durso, et al, 2017). For example, recent research has shown that feelings of confidence that come from power and other positive inductions can increase favorable self-evaluations Carroll et al, 2020) and physical performance (Horcajo et al, 2019) when people are thinking about their strengths, but decrease these self-evaluations and performance when they are thinking about their weaknesses.…”