| Power is everywhere. The research on power has been an old and important topic among disciplines of social science, political science and psychology. In recent years, social psychologists have conducted innovated studies on power-psychological development from the perspective of social cognition. Major social cognition theories of power such as the power-as-control model, approach/inhibition theory, target theory and the situated focused theory have explored the relation between power, cognition and behaviour. The latest theory in the current power-social cognition field, namely situated focused theory of power believes in different situations, power can affect the selectively and flexibility of information processing, and further influence the changeability of behaviour.Based on the situated focused theory of power, this essay is to conduct in-depth research on the relation between power and cognition, and to innovatively employ confidence as moderator variable to explore the relevance between confidence and power effect based on previous studies. This research is to employ methods of document collection and psychological experiments. The experiment objects are undergraduate students of the writer’s university. They are divided into group with power and without power. Attention and memory are to be employed as target variables. The result shows in a neutral setting, those with high power, when compared to those with low power, perform worse on attention and recall, and are less persuaded by information. Therefore, when the target situation is established, under the effect of power regulated by confidence, those with high power can better deal with the target related information. Confidence does not play a mediating role in this condition.This essay broadens the situated focused theory of power and expand the theoretical results of Brinol and others. It also analyses the deficiencies and limits of sample selection and research methods, which points out the direction for future studies. |
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