Power Affects Anger Expression Processing

Power play an essential role in regulating social interactions and influence social relations.As long as power exists,whatever its source and form,its essence is an asymmetrical control.Power exists in the relationship between interdependent people(groups)and people(groups).In recent years,more and more researches begin to regard power as a subjective psychological experience.That is,the sense of power(Anderson & Berdahl,2002).Therefore,power can be activated through power cues or recall of power experiences,and it can activate power-related cognition,emotion,and behavior(Galinsky,Rucker,& Magee,2015).Most of past studies from the relationship between social power and emotional processing,neglected the daily reality of individuals interacting with others at their same power level,as well as above or below.Current studies on power and emotion have focused only on the emotions expressed by emotional observers(perceiver)(Hareli & Hess,2010;Hareli & Rafaeli,2008;Tiedens,2001;Van Kleef,2009,2010).Our basic hypothesis is individual's perception for others' emotions depends on power levels of both parties.To test this hypothesis,with the help of ERPs,the present study used an oddball paradigm to investigate how social power of the emotion observer(perceiver)and the emotion expresser(target)modulates the facial expression processing.Specifically,Participants assigned into a high-power(HP),low-power(LP)were primed by power episode(Study2).The experiment consists of two studies: experiment one uses ERP technique and modified oddball paradigm to examine the task-related situations(when anger occurs).The second experiment used the oddball paradigm modified by ERP technology to examine the non-emotional face(the non-emotional face-the aged face)in the task-independent situation.The EEG features of the effect of keystroke response and sense of power on anger expression recognition were as follows:1.In the task-related situation,the influence of target power on anger expression recognition mainly occurred in the early stage,while individual power and target power had influence on anger expression recognition in the late P300 component.Specifically,the result of N1?N170 shows that the main effect of the target power is significant,the low power target induces a larger amplitude than the high power target,and the result of P1?N3 shows thatthe high power target leads to a larger amplitude than the low power target,that is to say,the low power target induces a larger amplitude than the high power target.Both the subjects with low power and those with high power are more sensitive to high objective power.In the VPP component,high power target leads to greater VPP amplitude than low power target.High power target leads to greater P300 amplitude than low power target,while high power individual induces more negative P300 amplitude than low power individual.2.In task-independent context,individual power has a certain effect on anger expression recognition.On N170 component,there is a significant interaction between individual power and electrode points,specifically.There was significant difference in the recognition of anger on P7 at the electrode point,but no significant difference was found in the recognition of angry expression on P8 at the electrode point.In conclusion,in the task-related context,the influence of power on anger expression recognition is mainly focused on the early and late components,especially by the power of target.