| The Situated Focus Theory of Power indicates that compared to powerless individuals,powerful individuals have a higher sense of control over the environment and others.Powerful individuals have higher selective attention and more flexibility to process information,so they can identify information relevant to the situation and ignore the irrelevant information,whereas powerless individuals attend to different types of information more equally.Individuals primed with power can show behavior consistent with the situational goals.Current studies have found that power can promote prosocial behavior,but also can suppress prosocial behavior.Powerful individuals show different prosocial behavior tendency because the goal of current situation is different.Based on the Situated Focus Theory of Power,this study will explore the influence of power on prosocial behavior in cooperative and competitive situations.Study 1 conducts a field experiment to explore the influence of power on prosocial behavior under cooperative and competitive situations(N=45).Study 2 aims to explore the relationship between sense of power and prosocial behavior in cooperative context(Study 2a,N=139)and competitive context(Study 2b,N=131)by the means of questionnaire.Study 3 conducts an experiment to explore the psychological mechanism of the power influence on prosocial behavior in cooperative context(Study 3a,N=100)and competitive context(Study 3b,N=121),including to test the mediating effect of perceived benefit and the moderating effect of social distance.The results of this study show that individuals with high sense of power always exhibit behavior consistent with the situation,(1)exhibit more prosocial behavior in the cooperative situation,(2)less prosocial behavior in the competitive situation.(3)Perceived benefit turns out to be a significant mediator between the sense of power and prosocial behavior,(4)while the moderating role of social distance is only significant in competitive context. |
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