title: Does power help or hurt? The moderating role of self-other focus on power and perspective-taking in romantic relationships.
abstract: Reconciling competing viewpoints suggesting that power helps and hurts perspective-taking in close relationships, in two experiments and two daily experience studies we tested the hypothesis that power's effect on perspective-taking depends on the extent to which people are relatively self-versus other-focused. In Study 1, recalling a time of high (vs. low) power over a romantic partner reduced inclinations to take the partner's perspective for relatively self-focused but not other-focused individuals. Studies 2 and 3 replicated Study 1 using daily variations in power and perspective-taking. In Study 4, being the "in-charge" partner during a conflict conversation reduced empathic accuracy for more self-focused individuals. Self-other focus was assessed with measures of gratitude, relational self-construal, and social value orientation. The current findings provide evidence that, particularly for the more self-focused, relationship power influences people's inclinations to take their romantic partner's perspective in daily life as well as their empathic accuracy during conflict.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Personality and Social Research, 4143 Tolman Hall #5050, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-5050, USA. amieg@berkeley.edu
authors.forename: Amie M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Gordon
authors.forename: Serena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012747:Sexual Partners / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: empathic accuracy; perspective-taking; power; romantic relationships; self–other focus