Does power increase self-control? Episodic priming may not provide the answer

Abstract

Powerful people (e.g., political and business leaders) should be able to control their impulses and act in line with long-term rather than short-term interests. However, theories of power suggest different answers to the question whether the basic experience of feeling powerful decreases (e.g., Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) or increases self-control performance (e.g., Magee & Smith, 2013). We conducted a preregistered direct replication of the only experiment testing the effects of power on self-control (Joshi & Fast, 2013, Study 3). In contrast to the original results, social power, operationalized by episodic priming, did not affect temporal discounting. A possible explanation is the fact that the power priming failed to elevate participants’ sense of power. Thus, the null findings challenge the power priming paradigm rather than the two theories from which opposite predictions were derived. In order to understand how power affects self-control, future research may need to rely on other manipulations.