The Influence Of Similar Painful Experiences On Individual Sympathy And Evaluation Under The Priming Of Sense Of Power

Power is ubiquitous in social life.As a crucial topic that has been valued by social psychologists,it runs through the whole process of social development,organizational operation,and interpersonal interaction,influences individual’s cognition,emotion,and behavior.As a common phenomenon in life,similar painful experiences also play an important role in interpersonal perception,and promotes the understanding and sympathy towards similar people.Based on the differences between high and low power people,however,the researchers found that the effects of similar experiences is not identical in contexts.Therefore,this study,on the basis of investigating the effect of similar painful experience on sympathy and evaluation toward others,attempted to explore how similar experiences affect individuals’ evaluation of others in different sense of power,as well as its mechanism.In experiment 1,after surveying the experience of bullying,participants were asked to evaluate another individual who had faced the similar experience and report the degree of sympathy.In experiment 2,manipulated participant’s power by word searching,and manipulated similar experiences through the mutual recognition paradigm;measured participants’ sympathy and evaluation to individuals in similar painful situation.In experiment 3,the leadersubordinate paradigm was used to prime participants’ sense of power;manipulated similar experiences through digital memory task;measured participants’ evaluation to individuals in similar painful situation To sum up,this study drawn the following conclusions:(1)Compared with the no-experience group,participants in the similar experience group had more sympathy to the target person and higher overall evaluation.(2)In high-power condition,participants in the similar painful experience group have a lower overall evaluation to the target person than those in the no-experience group;the perceptive difficulty to the similar painful event mediated the evaluation to another individual who were facing the similar painful experience.(3)In low-power condition,compared with the no-experience group,participants in the similar painful experience group had a higher overall evaluation to the target;individual’s estimation of the target’s perceptive difficulty to painful events mediated the evaluation to another individual who were experiencing the similar painful event.Finally,the limitations of the research was analyzed,and future directions were discussed.