The effects of power on those who possess it: An interpersonal perspective on social cognition

Research on social cognition is typically concerned with how the minds of individuals perceive, encode, recall and judge the behavior of social targets. Recently this literature has been touched by invigorated interest in the social and interpersonal contexts in which social cognitions occur (c.f., Levine, Resnick & Higgins, 1993; Resnick, Levine & Teasley, 1991; Thompson, Levine & Messick, 1999). Building on classic work by Asch (1951), Festinger (1954), McGuire (1969) and (Zajonc, 1960; 1965) among others, psychologists who care about the social and sociological determinants of behavior have begun to investigate how social systems such as culture (Markus & Kityama, 1991; Morris and Peng, 1994), demography (McGuire & Padawer-Singer, 1976, Steele & Aronson, 1995), democracy (Keltner & Robinson, 1996; Nemeth, 1986; Gruenfeld, 1995; Gruenfeld & Preston, 2000); hierarchy (Bargh, Raymond, Pryor & Strack, 1995; Fiske, 1993; Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson, 2002), accountability (Tetlock, 1992) and relationships (Staudinger & Baltes,1996; Wegner, Erber & Raymond, 1991) affect basic cognitive processes.