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M. Wang & F. Yang, Power, Stereotypes, and Spontaneous Trait Inferences
the interaction effect between power and sentence type was not significant, F(2, 134) = 2.07, p = .130, η2p = .030. Consistent with the findings of Study 1, the results of Study 2 demonstrated that the effects of gender stereotypes on STIs were moderated by perceivers’ power. That is, high-power individuals, but not low-power individuals, tended to draw STIs from stereotype-consistent behaviors but not from stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. Thus, the results of Study 1 and Study 2 consistently confirmed our prediction that the effects of stereotypes on STIs are moderated by perceivers’ power. In both studies, we manipulated participants’ power via conceptual priming. To further assess whether our findings can be generalized, we measured participants’ dispositional power and examined the moderating role of such power in Study 3.
translated from English to Chinese by a psychology Ph.D. student who was fluent in English. This version was then translated from Chinese to English by a different psychology Ph.D. student. The new English version was then compared with the original version; any discrepancies arising from the back-translation process were then adjusted. The generalized version of the Personal Sense of Power Scale asks participants to report their generalized beliefs about the power that they hold in their relationships with others. Participants rated their agreement with each of eight items, including “in my relationships with others, I think I have a great deal of power,” on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). As in previous research (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006), in the present study, the scale showed high internal consistency (α = .848, M = 4.95, SD = 0.73).
Study 3 In Study 3, we measured participants’ sense of power with the Personal Sense of Power Scale (Anderson, John, et al., 2012), which has been widely used in previous research (e.g., Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Anderson, Kraus, Galinsky, & Keltner, 2012; Joshi & Fast, 2013).
Method Participants A total of 118 undergraduate students (41 males and 76 females, one participant’s sex information was lost, Mage = 19.52, SD = 0.71) who attended a university in China volunteered to participate in the current study.
Procedure and Materials Upon their arrival, participants were informed that they would complete a memory test and a questionnaire about interpersonal relationships. The so-called memory test was the same as that employed in Study 2. Participants needed to indicate as quickly and accurately as possible whether the probe was presented in the preceding sentence. All 64 trials were presented on the computer in random order. Following the memory test, participants completed the Personal Sense of Power Scale. Finally, participants were checked for suspicion, debriefed, and thanked. The Personal Sense of Power Scale We measured participants’ sense of power with the generalized version of the Personal Sense of Power Scale (Anderson, John, et al., 2012). Following the backtranslation procedure (Brislin, 1980), the scale was first Social Psychology (2017), 48(1), 3–18
Results and Discussion Preliminary Analyses Four participants (2 males and 2 females) who may have failed to follow our instructions were excluded from the analysis because of their excessive error rates (greater than 50%); the inclusion of these individuals did not change the pattern of the data or any critical inferential test. The data of the remaining 114 participants were further analyzed. Participants’ sense of power scores was calculated by averaging across the items (items 2, 4, 6, and 7 were reverse scored), with higher scores indicating a higher sense of power. Their scores were sorted in descending order. To test whether the effects of stereotypes on STIs differed between powerful and powerless individuals, we selected individuals with higher scores (at the top end of the distribution) as powerful participants and individuals with lower scores (at the bottom end of the distribution) as powerless participants. A power analysis (80% power, a large effect size, two-tailed, at the 0.05 significance level; Cohen, 1988) indicated that a sample size of at least 40 participants was sufficient for the present data analysis. Hence, the top 20% of participants (n = 23, 9 males and 14 females) were selected as high-power participants and the bottom 20% of participants (n = 23, 6 males and 17 females) were selected as low-power participants (similar to the approach used to select participants in Zou, Hudson, & Rapee, 2007).
Reaction Times As in Studies 1 and 2, in Study 3, incorrect “yes” responses (4.10%) and outliers (greater than 2.5 standard deviations Ó 2017 Hogrefe Publishing