title: Frontal Cortical Asymmetry May Partially Mediate the Influence of Social Power on Anger Expression.
abstract: When irritated by other people, powerful people usually tend to express their anger explicitly and directly, whereas people in less powerful positions are more likely not to show their feelings freely. The neural mechanism behind power and its influence on expression tendency has been scarcely explored. This study recorded frontal EEG activity at rest and frontal EEG activation while participants were engaged in a writing task describing an anger-eliciting event, in which they were irritated by people with higher or lower social power. Participants' anger levels and expression inclination levels were self-reported on nine-point visual analog Likert scales, and also rated by independent raters based on the essays they had written. The results showed that high social power was indeed associated with greater anger expression tendency and greater left frontal activation than low social power. This is in line with the approach-inhibition theory of power. The mid-frontal asymmetric activation served as a partial mediator between social power and expression inclination. This effect may relate to the functions of the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of information integration and evaluation and the control of motivation direction, as reported by previous studies.
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China.
authors: Dongdong
authors: D
authors: Li
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical UniversityBeijing, China; Beijing Institute for Brain DisordersBeijing, China.
authors: Changming
authors: C
authors: Wang
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China.
authors: Qin
authors: Q
authors: Yin
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China.
authors: Mengchai
authors: M
authors: Mao
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China.
authors: Chaozhe
authors: C
authors: Zhu
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal UniversityBeijing, China.
authors: Yuxia
authors: Y
authors: Huang
keywords: emotion; expressivity; frontal alpha asymmetry; mediator; power