Feelings of power lead people to take sides with other powerful parties

Abstract

It has often been noted that power has various self-reinforcing effects, in the sense that it leads people to support the interests of other powerful people and harm the interests of the powerless. In the current article we investigate this in a fundamental manner and show that the experience of power makes people more inclined to side with parties that are higher in the hierarchy and against parties that are lower in that hierarchy. Two studies demonstrate that people who experience elevated power side with parties higher in the hierarchy and against parties lower in the hierarchy. A third experiment identifies an important moderator: if people sense their power is unfair and illegitimate, this effect is blocked. These results extend our understanding of the effects of power on moral thinking to actual side taking with one party against another in an interpersonal, moral conflict.