One for All: Social Power Increases Self-Anchoring of Traits, Attitudes, and Emotions

Abstract

We argue that powerful people tend to engage in social projection. Specifically, they self-anchor: They use the self as a reference point when judging others' internal states. In Study 1, which used a reaction-time paradigm, powerful people used their own traits as a reference when assessing the traits of group members, classifying group descriptors more quickly if they had previously reported that those terms described themselves. Study 2, which used a classic false-consensus paradigm, showed that powerful people believed that their group-related attitudes were shared by group members. Study 3 showed that more-powerful people relied more on their own state affect when judging other people's..