Power Heightens Sensitivity to Unfairness Against the Self

Abstract

Power is accompanied by a sense of entitlement, which shapes reactions to self-relevant injustices. We propose that powerful people more strongly expect to be treated fairly and are faster to perceive unjust treatment that violates these expectations. After preliminary data demonstrated that power leads people to expect fair outcomes for themselves, we conducted four experiments. Participants primed with high (vs. low) power were faster to identify violations of distributive justice in which they were victims (Study 1). This effect was specific to self-relevant injustices (Study 2) and generalized to violations of interpersonal justice (Study 3). Finally, participants primed with high power were more likely to take action against unfair treatment (Study 4). These findings suggest a process by which hierarchies may be maintained: Whereas the powerless are comparatively less sensitive to unfair treatment, the powerful may retain their social standing by quickly perceiving and responding to self-relevant injustices.

Keywords

power social hierarchy fairness distributive justice interpersonal justice

Powerful people often treat others in an unjust manner, adhering less to distributive and procedural justice in their interpersonal interactions (Blader & Chen, 2012). But how do those in power perceive and react to unfair treatment against themselves? The ability to quickly perceive unfairness against the self is a crucial component of human cognition (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992), enabling victims to rectify the injustice by punishing the offender or removing oneself from the situation (D. T. Miller, 2001). In the present research, we examined the effects of power on sensitivity to unfairness—that is, the speed at which people perceive unfairness against the self.

Because powerless people are more likely to be treated unfairly (Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Schminke, Cropanzano, & Rupp, 2002) and may feel a greater need to evaluate the trustworthiness of those around them (Tyler & Lind, 1992), one might expect the powerless to be particularly motivated to detect unfairness against the self. However, we instead propose that powerful people are faster to perceive and react against situations in which they are victims of unfairness. We suggest that because power is accompanied by a sense of entitlement, powerful people more strongly expect fair outcomes for themselves and are faster to perceive injustices that violate these expectations. This may illustrate a process by which hierarchies are maintained: Quickly perceiving and responding to unfair treatment could allow the powerful to avoid being cheated by others, thereby retaining their higher social standing. In contrast, less powerful individuals may not readily perceive situations in which they are being treated unfairly, perpetuating their own disempowerment.

Power and Entitlement

Power refers to disproportionate control over other individuals’ outcomes (Fast & Chen, 2009) and transforms people’s views of the self in various ways. In particular, power is typically accompanied by an inflated view of the self. Those in power overestimate the extent to which they actually possess control over outcomes (i.e., illusory control; Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009) and, as a result, report greater levels of optimism (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006) and self-esteem (Wojciszke & Struzynska-Kujalowicz, 2007). They overestimate their personal characteristics, even on objectively measurable dimensions such as their own height (Duguid & Goncalo, 2012). Powerful people are more confident in their social judgments (Briñol, Petty, Valle, Rucker, & Becerra, 2007; See, Morrison, Rothman, & Soll, 2011), disregarding relevant social information (Johnson & Lammers, 2012) and adhering strictly to their own, pre-existing opinions rather than incorporating the views of others (Galinsky, Magee, Gruenfeld, Whitson, & Liljenquist, 2008).

Given this evidence, it is perhaps not surprising that power also leads to a sense of entitlement (De Cremer & Van Dijk, 2005; Van Dijk & De Cremer, 2006). Indeed, one of the most significant consequences of power discrepancies is that powerful people come to believe that they deserve better outcomes than others (Major, 1994). This entitlement causes powerful people to demand more resources for themselves (Van Dijk & De Cremer, 2006). For instance, previous research using resource dilemmas has demonstrated that people assigned to positions of power (e.g., leader or supervisor) take more from a common resource, relative to participants in less powerful roles (De Cremer & Van Dijk, 2005). Similarly, men (high-power group members) demonstrate greater levels of entitlement than women (low-power group members) by paying themselves more for the same work (Major, McFarlin, & Gagnon, 1984; Pelham & Hetts, 2001).

In their pursuit of additional resources, powerful people are often willing to engage in unfair behavior. They are more likely to cheat (Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010) and steal (Yap, Wazlawek, Lucas, Cuddy, & Carney, 2013), and find it easier to lie (Carney et al., 2013). More broadly, they report greater unethical decision-making tendencies and behaviors (Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza-Denton, & Keltner, 2012). Ironically, despite being more likely to cheat themselves, they are particularly condemnatory of other people’s cheating behavior (Lammers et al., 2010). Much of this prior work has focused on the role of the powerful as perpetrators of immorality, but less research has examined how powerful people react when they are the recipients of unfair treatment. The present research sought to address this gap by examining how powerful people’s elevated entitlement may shape sensitivity to unfairness.

Entitlement and Reactions to Injustice

An important consequence of entitlement is that it shapes reactions to unfairness across multiple forms of justice, including distributive justice (Goncalo & Kim, 2010) and interpersonal justice (Greenberg, 1993).

First, entitlement shapes how people respond to violations of distributive justice, which focuses on the allocations of material outcomes (Major, 1994). Equity theory (Adams, 1965; Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978) and relative-deprivation theory (Crosby, 1976; Davis, 1959; Martin, 1981) both claim that people experience a sense of injustice when they do not receive valued outcomes they feel entitled to receive. For instance, being underpaid relative to one’s co-workers (i.e., violations of distributive justice; Taris, Kalimo, & Schaufeli, 2002) is perceived as unjust because people receive less than they think they deserve (Adams, 1965). Other research suggests that recipients in the ultimatum game often reject unfair offers because they feel deserving of fair resource distributions and react negatively when they do not receive them (Sanfey, Rilling, Aronson, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2003).

Perceptions of entitlement and deservingness also influence reactions to violations of interpersonal justice, which is based on the level of respect that one is afforded in interpersonal interactions (Greenberg, 1993). For instance, being undeservedly ostracized or excluded from an interaction can be experienced as unjust and induce anger (Chow, Tiedens, & Govan, 2008). Researchers have theorized that such disrespectful actions are experienced as unjust because they deprive people of the respect to which they feel entitled (Bourdieu, 1965) or because they subject people to a harmful moral experience that they do not deserve (W. I. Miller, 1993). In other words, negative reactions to injustice arise from a perceived mismatch between people’s deserved and experienced outcomes.

As a result, individual variability in entitlement shapes people’s reactions to injustices that they experience. For instance, people with a high sense of self-worth reject more unfair offers in the ultimatum game, because they may feel more deserving of fairness (Dunn, Makarova, Evans, & Clark, 2010). This research suggests that those who feel a greater sense of entitlement may be more sensitive to unfairness against the self, both with respect to distributive and interpersonal justice (for a similar argument about how entitlement also affects reactions to procedural justice, which refers to the fairness of processes used to allocate resources, see Diekmann, Sondak, & Barsness, 2007). We reasoned that a sense of entitlement may be accompanied by the expectation that one will be treated fairly, and that individuals who expect to be treated fairly would be particularly quick to notice situations in which they are victims of unfairness. This greater sensitivity to unfairness may have further downstream consequences, such as making people more likely to take action against unfair situations.

Overview

Previous research remains inconclusive about whether the powerful (vs. powerless) are more concerned with self-relevant injustices. One could theorize that powerless individuals attend more to fairness to evaluate the trustworthiness of those around them (consistent with relational models of justice; Tyler & Lind, 1992) or to manage the greater uncertainty of their situation (as would be predicted by uncertainty management theory; Lind & Van den Bos, 2002). However, researchers have argued that powerful individuals may care about fairness as a way of maintaining their existing levels of influence (Blader & Chen, 2011; Chen, Brockner, & Greenberg, 2003). Most relevant to the present work, researchers have shown that the powerful react more strongly to procedural fairness, such that procedural fairness better predicts job satisfaction for powerful (vs. powerless) individuals (Diekmann et al., 2007). These effects were driven by differences in perceptions of deservingness or entitlement (although these findings may not apply to other cultural contexts; Begley, Lee, & Hui, 2006). Broadly, this extant research suggests that power shapes people’s concerns about justice, but we extend this work to examine how power shapes the actual speed at which they perceive violations of fairness (i.e., their sensitivity to unfairness).

Earlier, we reviewed convergent evidence that power leads people to develop a sense of entitlement (Van Dijk & De Cremer, 2006), both with respect to distributive and interpersonal justice. This elevated entitlement, in turn, affects their reactions to injustices that they experience (Major, 1994). Of note, we are not proposing that power changes people’s definition of what is fair; rather, we suggest that because powerful people feel more deserving of fairness, power increases the extent to which people expect fair treatment (see also Diekmann et al., 2007). We propose that those who expect fair treatment—such as people in positions of power—may be faster to perceive signs of unfair treatment against themselves. This heightened sensitivity to unfairness may then allow the powerful to quickly react to disadvantageous situations. Crucially, we expect the powerful to exhibit increased sensitivity to situations in which they are unfairly disadvantaged (i.e., receiving less than others) but not to situations in which they are unfairly advantaged (i.e., receiving more than others), or situations in which others are victims of disadvantage, because these situations would not conflict with their feelings of entitlement.

To test these predictions, we first tested our proposal that people primed to feel high (vs. low) power would more strongly expect to receive fair treatment (Pilot Study). Across four studies, we then tested our predictions that the experience of high power would heighten sensitivity to unfairness. We manipulated power using an experiential priming task (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003) and used reaction time (RT) measures to examine participants’ sensitivity to unfairness. Study 1 examined whether people primed to feel high power would be faster to perceive violations of distributive justice in which they were victims (i.e., not receiving as much money as other individuals). Study 2 tested whether power affects sensitivity to unfairness only for self-relevant injustices. Study 3 investigated whether people primed to feel high power would be faster to perceive violations of interpersonal injustice in which they were victims (i.e., not receiving the same number of turns as other individuals in a simulated game of catch). Finally, Study 4 examined whether people primed to feel high power would be quicker to take action against situations in which they are victims of unfairness.

Here, we focus on instances of unfairness that violated the principle of equality (according to which outcomes are fair when resources are distributed equally among individuals), rather than the principles of equity or need (Deutsch, 1975). The principle of equality provides a particularly clear metric by which to evaluate the fairness of outcomes, and is commonly used to assess fairness (e.g., in the ultimatum game, outcomes are perceived as fair when money is distributed equally among the two players; Sanfey et al., 2003).

Pilot Study

We proposed that the sense of entitlement accompanying power leads powerful people to expect fair treatment from others. We tested this theoretical premise in a pilot study. Participants were primed to feel high or low power and were led to believe that they would be playing a dictator game against another participant. The dictator game is a commonly used economic game in which one player (the dictator) receives a certain amount of money and determines how much of this money to give to the other player (the recipient). According to the principle of equality, the outcome of a dictator game would be regarded as fair when the dictator distributes half of the total resources to the recipient. Participants were always assigned to the recipient role, and we measured the degree to which participants expected a fair outcome.

Method

Participants

Participants (n = 39; 17 women; M age = 30.38, SD = 8.66) were recruited from Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Data collected through Mechanical Turk are as reliable as those collected through traditional methods (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011).

Procedure

We instructed participants that they would be playing the dictator game with another individual (in reality, participants played against a computer). In this game, one player received 10 tokens and decided how many of these tokens to distribute to the other player. After receiving these instructions, participants were told that they were being matched with another player and were asked to respond to a writing prompt while they waited. Here, participants completed a manipulation of power (Galinsky et al., 2003), in which they wrote about a time in which they had power over someone else (high-power condition) or a time in which someone else had power over them (low-power condition).

Next, participants were informed that they had been paired with another player and that participants were assigned to the recipient role. They were then asked to estimate the outcome of the game; that is, participants were to indicate how many tokens (0 to 10) they expected to receive from the other player. Finally, they played one round of the dictator game.

Results and Discussion

Participants primed with high power expected to receive significantly more tokens from the other player (M = 4.19, SD = 2.14) than participants primed with low power (M = 2.17, SD = 2.31), t(37) = 2.843, p = .007, d = 0.91, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.581, 3.466]. Looking at it another way, one-sample t tests revealed that participants primed to feel low power expected to receive significantly less than half of the total tokens (i.e., a fair distribution), t(17) = 5.21, p < .001, d = 1.23, 95% CI = [−3.98, −1.69], whereas participants primed to feel high power did not expect to receive less than half of the tokens, t(20) = 1.74, p = .098, d = 0.38, 95% CI = [−1.78, 0.16]. In other words, participants primed with high power expected a fair outcome, but those primed with low power did not. These results support our proposal that because power is accompanied by a sense of entitlement (Van Dijk & De Cremer, 2006), powerful people more strongly expect to receive fair and equitable outcomes for themselves.¹

Study 1

After establishing that powerful people more strongly expect to be treated fairly, we next sought to determine whether powerful people are faster to perceive situations in which they are unfairly disadvantaged. We propose that powerful people’s heightened expectations make self-relevant injustices more noticeable and salient (because these injustices are inconsistent with their expectations), thereby eliciting quicker responses. Study 1 tested whether people primed with high (vs. low) power would be more sensitive to (i.e., faster to perceive) cues suggesting that they were victims of unfairness, specifically in the domain of distributive justice. Distributive justice refers to the fair distribution of valuable resources (e.g., money; Goncalo & Kim, 2010). After completing a manipulation of power, participants were presented with a task assessing sensitivity to violations of distributive justice. Specifically, we presented participants with a series of monetary distributions (between the participant and two other individuals) and examined participants’ RTs to perceive fair and unfair monetary distributions. We predicted that participants primed with high power would be faster to identify unfair distributions in which they received less money than others.

Method

Participants

Participants (n = 227; 87 women; M age = 29.92, SD = 11.09)² were recruited through Mechanical Turk. Participants were excluded from analyses if they failed to complete the manipulation of power, performed at or worse than chance at identifying the fair or unfair trials correctly, or had average RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (n = 7).³

Procedure

Participants first completed the same manipulation of power used in our pilot study. Next, participants completed a task assessing sensitivity to unfairness. Participants saw a series of trials in which money (represented as coins) was distributed between three individuals, including the participant (see Figure 1). Participants were instructed to respond by pressing keys categorizing each distribution as fair (if all individuals received the same number of coins) or unfair (if the individuals did not receive the same number of coins). On each trial, each player received anywhere between three and five coins. Participants completed 6 practice trials and 32 experimental trials. Half of the trials were fair, and half were unfair. RTs were measured for each trial.

Figure 1.

Sample stimulus used in Studies 1 and 2 to assess participants’ speed to perceive unfairness.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two versions of this task. In one version, the unfair trials were designed such that participants were consistently victims of unfairness: Participants received less money than the other players in 12 of the 16 unfair trials. To determine whether participants primed with power would be more sensitive to unfairness only when they were victims (but not beneficiaries) of unfairness, we included an additional version of the task as a comparison condition. Specifically, the other version of the task was designed such that participants were consistently beneficiaries of unfairness: Participants received more money than the other players in 12 of the 16 unfair trials. We chose to have 12 of the 16 unfair trials correspond to conditions to make the manipulation more subtle (reducing the likelihood that participants would guess our hypothesis of interest). Data from the remaining 4 of the 16 unfair trials that did not correspond to between-participant conditions were not analyzed, because we believed 4 trials was insufficient to calculate a reliable mean for RT.

Results

We excluded RT data from trials with an incorrect response (6.4% of trials) or with RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (0.4% of trials). When analyzing RT data, it is ideal for error rates to be equivalent across conditions (Fazio, 1990), and indeed, we did not expect or find any significant effects of power on error rates. RTs were logarithmically transformed to achieve normality.

We analyzed these RT data using a 2 (Power: low vs. high) × 2 (Unfairness: victim vs. beneficiary) × 2 (Trial: fair vs. unfair) repeated-measures ANCOVA, with trial as a within-subjects variable. We included participants’ overall RTs (logarithmically transformed) as a covariate to ensure that our results were not due to idiosyncratic differences in general processing speed between participants. This revealed a significant three-way interaction, F(1, 215) = 8.29, p = .004, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .04 (Figure 2; for ease of interpretation, all means are given in the original RTs). Decomposing this interaction, we found that for unfair trials, there was a significant Power × Unfairness interaction, F(1, 215) = 7.69, p = .006, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03. Simple-effects analyses revealed that among participants who were consistently victims of unfairness, those primed with high (vs. low) power were significantly faster to perceive the unfair trials, F(1, 215) = 5.64, p = .018, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03, 95% CI = [−0.0463, −0.0043]. In contrast, among participants who were consistently beneficiaries of unfairness, there was no effect of power on time to perceive the unfair trials, F(1, 215) = 2.28, p = .132, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .01, 95% CI = [−0.005, 0.041]. No other effects were significant, Fs ≤ 1.34, ps ≥ .248.

Figure 2.

Mean reaction times (±SE) for fair and unfair trials among participants primed with low or high power in a task where they were victims or beneficiaries of unfairness (Study 1).

Discussion

Using a novel paradigm to assess sensitivity to unfairness, we found that people primed with high power were faster to perceive unfair monetary distributions in which they received less money than others. Importantly, power did not influence people’s sensitivity to unfair monetary distributions in which they benefited from unfairness, demonstrating that powerful people are not simply more attentive to unfairness overall. Rather, the powerful selectively attend to indications that they themselves are victims of unfairness. We suggest that because powerful people more strongly expect to receive fair outcomes, they are faster to perceive unfair situations that violate these expectations.

However, a limitation to Study 1 is that we did not include a condition where participants evaluated monetary distributions in which they themselves were not implicated. Such a condition would provide a more direct test of our proposal that power affects sensitivity to unfairness against the self. We suggest that because power influences people’s perceptions of what they themselves deserve, powerful people are more sensitive only to self-relevant injustices. In addition, in Study 1, we did not include a control condition for the power manipulation, making it difficult to know whether our effects were driven by high or low power. Study 2 addressed these limitations.

Study 2

We have argued that power increases sensitivity to unfairness because power leads to a sense of entitlement, making people more likely to expect fair treatment for themselves. If this explanation is true, then powerful people would be expected to show greater sensitivity to unfairness when oneself is the victim, but not when someone else is the victim. In Study 2, we therefore included a condition where someone else was the victim, and participants were uninvolved in (and merely observed) the outcome distributions. We used the same task as in Study 1 to assess sensitivity to unfairness but presented participants with monetary distributions in which they were victims or observers (rather than beneficiaries as in Study 1) of unfairness. We predicted that people primed with high power would be faster to perceive unfairness in which they were victims, but not observers, of unfairness.

In addition, because the results of Study 1 could be interpreted as high power increasing sensitivity to unfairness or low power decreasing this sensitivity, we directly tested the former explanation by replacing the low-power condition with a control condition in Study 2.

Method

Participants

Participants (n = 265; 76 women; M age = 28.08, SD = 7.98) were recruited through Mechanical Turk. Participants were excluded from analyses if they did not complete the manipulation of power, performed at or worse than chance at identifying the fair or unfair trials correctly, or had average RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (n = 17).⁴

Procedure

Participants were randomly assigned to a high-power or control condition. The high-power condition was the same as in Study 1, whereas participants in the control condition were asked to write about their day yesterday (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006).

Next, as in Study 1, participants completed a task assessing sensitivity to unfairness. Participants saw a series of trials in which money was distributed between three individuals and were instructed to categorize each distribution as fair or unfair. RTs were measured for each trial. However, in contrast to Study 1, we did not manipulate whether participants were consistently victims or beneficiaries of unfairness. Instead, we replaced the beneficiary of unfairness condition with an observer of unfairness condition, in which participants were not implicated in the monetary distributions. In this condition, participants saw trials in which money was distributed between three other individuals that did not include participants themselves. One player among these three was consistently a victim of unfairness, receiving less money than the other players in 12 of the 16 unfair trials. As in Study 1, data from the 4 unfair trials that did not correspond to between-participant conditions were not analyzed. Participants were assigned to be victims or observers of unfairness. They completed 6 practice trials and 32 experimental trials.

Results

We excluded RT data from trials with an incorrect response (7.8% of trials) or with RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (1.2% of trials). As before, we did not expect or find any significant effects of power on error rates, and RTs were logarithmically transformed.

We analyzed these RT data using a 2 (Power: control vs. high) × 2 (Unfairness: victim vs. observer) × 2 (Trial: fair vs. unfair) repeated-measures ANCOVA, with trial as a within-subjects variable and overall RT as a covariate. This revealed a significant three-way interaction, F(1, 243) = 8.78, p = .003, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .04 (Figure 3; for ease of interpretation, all means are given in the original RTs). Decomposing this interaction, we found that for unfair trials, there was a significant Power × Unfairness interaction, F(1, 243) = 7.46, p = .007, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03. Simple-effects analyses revealed that among participants who were consistently victims of unfairness, those primed with high power (vs. control) were significantly faster to perceive the unfair trials, F(1, 243) = 3.96, p = .048, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02, 95% CI = [−0.0353, −0.0002]. In contrast, among participants who were observers of unfairness, those primed with high power (vs. control) were significantly slower to perceive the unfair trials, F(1, 243) = 4.89, p = .028, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02, 95% CI = [0.0023, 0.0405]. No other effects were significant, Fs ≤ 2.10, ps ≥ .149.

Figure 3.

Mean reaction times (±SE) for fair and unfair trials among participants in the control or high-power conditions in a task where they were victims or observers of unfairness (Study 2).

Discussion

As predicted, participants who were victims of unfairness were faster to perceive the unfair trials when they were primed with high power, relative to the control condition. This effect was specific to self-relevant injustices, which provides additional evidence in support of our claim that power affects sensitivity to unfairness against the self, rather than unfairness in general. In addition, the inclusion of a control condition as a comparison in Study 2 demonstrates that the experience of high power increases sensitivity to unfairness against the self, rather than low power merely decreasing sensitivity to unfairness.

Interestingly, participants who were observers of unfairness were slower to perceive the unfair trials when primed with high power, which is consistent with previous research on the callousing effects of power (Van Kleef et al., 2008). Because power tends to make people more self-centered (Galinsky et al., 2006) and hypocritical (Lammers et al., 2010), it is possible that powerful people are less perceptive of unjust treatment directed toward others, despite being more sensitive to unfair treatment against themselves. Indeed, members of privileged groups are typically less cognizant of the plight of the disadvantaged (Lowery, Knowles, & Unzueta, 2007), and our findings suggest that power makes people slower to perceive injustices affecting others.

Study 3

Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that powerful people were faster to perceive violations of distributive justice in which they were victims. In Study 3, we sought to extend these findings to the domain of interpersonal justice, which refers to politeness, dignity, and respect for an individual in a social interaction (Greenberg, 1993). We assessed sensitivity to unfairness using a task adapted from the Cyberball paradigm (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000), a simulated game of catch between several players that is typically used to induce social exclusion. Previous research demonstrates that when people are socially excluded without being provided with a legitimate reason for this treatment, they perceive their exclusion as unfair (Chow et al., 2008). Therefore, we reasoned that being insufficiently included in the Cyberball game (i.e., not receiving as many opportunities to touch the ball) would be perceived as unfair, and participants were asked to keep track of whether each player was being equally included in the game. We examined participants’ RTs to perceive fair and unfair trials. We predicted that participants primed with high (vs. low) power would exhibit faster RTs to identify unfair trials in which they received fewer opportunities to touch the ball than others.

Method

Participants

Participants (n = 191; 94 women; M age = 33.80, SD = 12.10) were recruited through Mechanical Turk. Participants were excluded from analyses if they did not complete the manipulation of power, performed at or worse than chance at identifying the fair or unfair trials correctly, or had average RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (n = 32). We also excluded participants who guessed the hypothesis of the study (n = 1), reported experiencing technical difficulties (n = 1), or reported using pen and paper to keep track of the trials (n = 2).⁵

Procedure

Power was manipulated the same way as in Study 1. Participants then completed a task designed to assess sensitivity to interpersonal fairness. Adapting the Cyberball paradigm (Williams et al., 2000), participants saw a series of trials in which a ball was tossed between three individuals, which included the participant and two other individuals. In contrast to the original Cyberball paradigm, participants watched the ball being tossed between the three players, rather than selecting which player to throw to.⁶ Participants were asked to monitor how many times each player touched the ball and prompted to respond after each trial. They were instructed to press keys categorizing each trial as fair (if all players touched the ball the same number of times) or unfair (if the players did not touch the ball the same number of times). For each trial, the total number of ball tosses ranged from three to six, and each player touched the ball at least once. Participants completed 8 practice trials and 32 experimental trials. Half of the trials were fair, and half were unfair. RTs were measured for each trial.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two versions of this task. Depending on condition, the unfair trials were designed such that participants were consistently victims (or beneficiaries) of unfairness: Participants received fewer (or more) opportunities to touch the ball than the other players in 12 of the 16 unfair trials. As in Studies 1 and 2, the 4 unfair trials that did not correspond to between-participant conditions were not analyzed.

Results

We excluded RT data from trials with an incorrect response (17.6% of trials)⁷ or with RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (1.1% of trials). As before, we did not expect or find any significant effects of power on error rates, and RTs were logarithmically transformed.

We analyzed these RT data using a 2 (Power: low vs. high) × 2 (Unfairness: victim vs. beneficiary) × 2 (Trial: fair vs. unfair) repeated-measures ANCOVA, with trial as a within-subjects variable and overall RT as a covariate. This revealed a significant three-way interaction, F(1, 150) = 6.82, p = .010, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .04 (Figure 4; for ease of interpretation, all means are given in the original RTs). Decomposing this interaction, we found that for unfair trials, there was a significant Power × Unfairness interaction, F(1, 150) = 4.89, p = .003, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03. Simple-effects analyses revealed that among participants who were consistently victims of unfairness, those primed with high (vs. low) power were significantly faster to perceive the unfair trials, F(1, 150) = 4.39, p = .038, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03, 95% CI = [−0.0558, −0.0016]. Interestingly, among participants who were consistently beneficiaries of unfairness, those primed with high power were significantly slower to perceive the unfair trials, F(1, 150) = 4.07, p = .046, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03, 95% CI = [0.0009, 0.0845]. No other effects were significant, Fs ≤ 2.28, ps ≥ .133.

Figure 4.

Mean reaction times (±SE) for fair and unfair trials among participants primed with low or high power in a task where they were victims or beneficiaries of unfairness (Study 3).

Discussion

These findings conceptually replicate our results in Studies 1 and 2, demonstrating once again that powerful people are faster to perceive cues indicating that they are victims (but not beneficiaries) of unfairness. Study 3 extends these findings by demonstrating that power also increases sensitivity to violations of interpersonal justice (in addition to distributive justice) in which participants were not sufficiently included in interpersonal interactions.

Study 3 also addresses one potential limitation of the previous studies. On many of the unfair trials in Studies 1 and 2, the total number of coins presented on the screen was not evenly divisible by the number of players (e.g., 10 tokens distributed between three people), making an equal distribution seemingly impossible. We acknowledge that this may have been confusing, although participants nevertheless had little difficulty classifying each distribution as fair or unfair (as indicated by the low overall error rates). Fortunately, Study 3 avoids this issue because there was no finite resource pool (i.e., there is no finite number of possible ball tosses).

Interestingly, when participants were consistently beneficiaries of unfairness, individuals primed with high power were slower to perceive the unfair trials. This may be explained by the reasoning we applied to our finding in Study 2 that powerful people were slower to perceive unfair situations in which others were victims: In the same way that groups in positions of power (e.g., Whites) resist acknowledging their privileges and the ways in which they benefit from inequality (Lowery et al., 2007), perhaps participants primed to feel powerful in Study 3 were less quick to perceive that they were benefiting from unfairness.

Study 4

In Studies 1 to 3, we found that powerful people are faster to perceive unfair situations in which they are victims. This effect was specific to unfairness in which oneself was the victim and generalized across violations of both distributive and interpersonal justice. In Study 4, we examined what consequences might result from these differences in sensitivity, focusing on whether power also impacts how quickly people take action in response to unfair treatment.

Previous research highlights how power readies people for goal-directed behaviors. Powerful people are better able to focus their attention on their immediate goals, which prepares them to take action in pursuit of these goals (Guinote, 2007a). Power enables people to better process central, relevant information and inhibit peripheral, irrelevant information. This leads to greater accessibility of active goals (Slabu & Guinote, 2010), allowing the powerful to resist external distractions (Galinsky et al., 2008) and prioritize their focal goal (Guinote, 2008). This heightened attention then facilitates action in pursuit of one’s goals (Galinsky et al., 2003; Guinote, 2007a), making powerful people faster to initiate goal-directed behavior (Guinote, 2007b). Based on this prior work demonstrating that power promotes action, we predicted that powerful people would be faster to take action against situations in which they are victims of unfairness.

We manipulated participants’ power and presented them with a modified version of the distributive justice task used in Study 1. Participants again saw a series of monetary distributions but were told that there was an employer responsible for determining how much money they received on each trial. Participants were assigned to an employer such that participants were either victims or beneficiaries of unfairness. Importantly, participants received opportunities to switch to a different employer during the task (i.e., to take action against their current situation). We hypothesized that when the employer treats participants unfairly, participants primed with high (vs. low) power would switch to a different employer more quickly.

Method

Participants

Participants (n = 100; 43 women; M age = 32.68, SD = 12.47) were recruited through Mechanical Turk. Participants were excluded from analyses if they did not complete the manipulation of power, performed at or worse than chance at identifying the fair or unfair trials correctly, or had average RTs exceeding 10,000 ms (n = 5). We also excluded participants who reported experiencing technical difficulties (n = 2).⁸

Procedure

Power was manipulated the same way as in Studies 1 and 3. To assess how quickly participants would take action against situations in which they were victims of unfairness, participants completed a task adapted from Study 1. Participants were presented with a series of monetary distributions between three individuals (including the participant) and were instructed to categorize each distribution as fair or unfair. However, we modified the procedure by instructing participants that there was an “Employer” who decided how the money would be distributed. Furthermore, participants were led to believe that there were several employers, each of whom paid their “Employees” (i.e., the participant and the two other individuals receiving the money) differently. Participants were told that they had been randomly assigned to a particular employer but would have opportunities to switch to other employers throughout the task. To incentivize participants to attend to the task, they were told that they would receive points based on how many trials they categorized correctly and that they should attempt to earn as many points as possible.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two types of employers. Across both types of employers, half of the trials that participants saw were fair, and half were unfair. Under one type of employer, participants were victims of unfairness: Participants received less money than others in three of every four unfair trials. Under the other type of employer, participants were beneficiaries of unfairness: Participants received more money than others in three of every four unfair trials. The task consisted of eight blocks of trials, each block comprising eight trials. After every block (except for the last), participants were asked whether they would prefer to switch to a different employer. Participants who chose to switch were assigned to a different type of employer for the next block (those previously assigned to an employer that unfairly disadvantaged participants were then assigned to an employer that unfairly benefited participants, and vice versa). Our dependent variable was the number of blocks spent with their initial employer before deciding to switch to a different employer (scores ranged from 1 to 8).

Results

We conducted a 2 (Power: low vs. high) × 2 (Unfairness: victim vs. beneficiary) ANOVA on the number of blocks participants spent with their initial employer. The interaction was significant, F(1, 89) = 7.92, p = .006, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .08 (Figure 5). Simple-effects analyses revealed that when participants were assigned to be victims of unfairness, participants primed with high power spent fewer blocks with their initial employer before switching to a different employer (M = 1.62, SD = .94), relative to participants primed with low power (M = 3.30, SD = 2.49), F(1, 89) = 6.69, p = .011, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .07, 95% CI = [−2.969, −0.389]. In contrast, when participants were assigned to be beneficiaries of unfairness, there was no significant difference in the number of blocks that participants spent with their initial employer between participants primed with high or low power, F(1, 89) = 2.01, p = .160, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02, 95% CI = [−0.385, 2.302]. Main effects were non-significant, Fs ≤ 1.23, ps ≥ .271.⁹

Figure 5.

Number of blocks (±SE) spent with their initial employer in which participants were victims or beneficiaries of unfairness, among participants primed with low or high power (Study 4).

Discussion

When assigned to an employer who unfairly disadvantaged participants, individuals primed with high power switched to another employer more quickly. Thus, not only are powerful people faster to identify cues indicating that they are victims of unfairness (as evidenced by Studies 1-3), they are also more likely to act against this victimization. This finding corroborates previous work demonstrating that powerful people show a greater propensity toward action (Galinsky et al., 2003). The heightened agency experienced by those with power may enable them to respond effectively to unfairness.

One potential limitation of Study 4 is that placing participants under the discretion of an ostensible employer—a situation associated with low power—may have reduced the impact of the power manipulation. Therefore, it is possible that participants in the high-power condition were primed with medium (rather than high) power. However, in the real world, even individuals who possess considerable power still report to people above them (e.g., CEOs reporting to a board of directors), so it is unusual to have unmitigated power over others. Thus, the experience of feeling powerful and yet having a superior may be a relatively common experience. In addition, if placing participants under the discretion of an employer did in fact reduce the impact of the power manipulation, this would make for a more conservative test of our hypothesis that having more (vs. less) power affects people’s reactions to unfairness. Indeed, our findings suggest that greater power makes people more likely to act against unfairness.

General Discussion

Across four studies, people primed to feel powerful were faster to perceive and react to unfairness against the self. Participants primed with high power were more sensitive to violations of distributive justice in which they were victims (Study 1). This effect emerged only for violations of distributive justice in which the self (rather than somebody else) was the victim (Study 2), consistent with our explanation that these results are driven by power increasing people’s expectations that they themselves will be treated fairly. Power also increased sensitivity to violations of interpersonal justice (Study 3). Finally, powerful people were faster to take action against unfair situations in which they were victims (Study 4). These findings extend other theories of justice, which remain inconclusive about whether powerful or powerless people would be more concerned with self-relevant injustice (Blader & Chen, 2011; Lind & Van den Bos, 2002; Tyler & Lind, 1992). Despite the fact that powerless people are more likely to be on the receiving end of unfairness, and thus may have a greater incentive to perceive and react to these situations, it is, in fact, the powerful who are more perceptive of self-relevant injustices.

The present research builds on previous work demonstrating that power facilitates a sense of entitlement (Van Dijk & De Cremer, 2006). We suggest that this entitlement extends to expectations about fairness—powerful people expect to receive fair outcomes and treatment and are faster to perceive unjust situations that violate these expectations. In support of this explanation, in our pilot study, we found that powerful people expect better outcomes in a dictator game. Moreover, in our subsequent studies, power increased sensitivity to unfairness only when participants themselves were the victims, but not when someone else was the victim of unfair treatment. Although the powerful tend not to treat others in a fair and just way (Blader & Chen, 2012), they are nonetheless quicker to notice when they themselves are treated unfairly and to take action against such unfair treatment.

One complementary explanation for our results is that powerful people may be vigilant of threats to their power. People in positions of power are motivated to retain these positions (e.g., Blader & Chen, 2011; Chen et al., 2003; Sapolsky, 2005), and they often take actions that allow them to maintain power (Maner, Gailliot, Butz, & Peruche, 2007). Because experiencing unfair treatment may lead to disempowerment (Adams, 1965; Tepper, 2001), powerful people may be motivated to avoid this loss of power by being vigilant to unfairness against the self. However, this vigilance has been theorized to emerge only under certain circumstances, such as when the hierarchy is unstable and when the power holder is high in the desire for power (Mead & Maner, 2012). One way to disentangle between these explanations would be to manipulate key moderators, such as the stability of power hierarchies. If powerful people are more sensitive to unfairness even under conditions where vigilance is not expected to emerge, this would suggest that power’s influence on sensitivity to threat is driven primarily by elevated entitlement rather than vigilance.

Beyond the theoretical contributions of our findings, the present research also provides a methodological innovation to previous work on fairness and justice. Most research examines perceptions of fairness through explicit self-report judgments to measure people’s beliefs (e.g., under the construct of “justice sensitivity”; Schmitt, Gollwitzer, Maes, & Arbach, 2005). Such measures make it difficult to, for instance, disentangle between automatic, intuitive processes and controlled, deliberative processes. Given that morally relevant judgments are often the result of automatic processes (Haidt, 2001), it may be useful for researchers to incorporate measures assessing more automatic mechanisms contributing to perceptions of fairness. The present work, by measuring RTs to briefly presented stimuli, demonstrates that power changes people’s sensitivity to unfairness even at a basic, automatic level. Indeed, this is consistent with other research suggesting that power affects a variety of fundamental cognitive processes, changing people’s psychological states even without their explicit awareness (Guinote, 2007b; Slabu & Guinote, 2010). In addition, whereas some researchers have conceptualized sensitivity to unfairness as a dispositional trait (Schmitt et al., 2005), the present findings suggest that this sensitivity can also be shifted by situational factors such as power.

One limitation of the present studies is that we investigated sensitivity to fairness only under the principle of equality, rather than the principles of equity or need. The relevant principle of fairness differs depending on the type of relationship between interaction partners; whereas the principle of equality is commonly used in communal relationships (i.e., among friends, romantic partners, and family members), the principle of equity is more likely to be used in exchange relationships (e.g., among business associates; Clark & Mills, 1993). One open question is how powerful people perceive unfairness under other principles of fairness. Prior work raises the possibility that the present findings may generalize beyond fairness under the principle of equality. For example, high- (vs. low-) power individuals tend to reward themselves more for work even when their inputs are the same (Major et al., 1984), suggesting that powerful individuals may overvalue the worth of their own contributions, even when these are equivalent to others’ contributions. Because equity defines fairness on the perceived value of one’s contributions, powerful individuals may also feel a greater sense of entitlement to fairness under the principle of equity, which we predict would make them more sensitive to unfairness. However, the same may not be true for fairness under the principle of need, because powerful people may be less likely to perceive themselves as more deserving of need-based resources (e.g., welfare). Future research would benefit from examining the generalizability of the present findings to these other principles.

Another potential concern is whether powerful people in our studies were faster to respond because they were treated unfairly or merely because they faced a disadvantageous situation. In other words, it may be that powerful people are more sensitive to disadvantageous situations in general, even those that are not necessarily unjust (e.g., receiving less money than others as a result of a fair lottery in which everyone has an equitable chance of winning). We note that some previous theorizing suggests powerful people feel entitled specifically to fair outcomes and treatment (Diekmann et al., 2007), and other work indicates that powerful people are not simply more sensitive to negative information overall (Whitson et al., 2013). Nevertheless, additional research is necessary to more thoroughly test this alternative explanation. For instance, future research could examine people’s sensitivity to disadvantageous outcomes that are the result of ostensibly fair procedures (e.g., a lottery). If power did not affect this sensitivity, this would provide further evidence that power influences only sensitivity to unjust disadvantage.

Finally, our results contribute to a substantial body of research examining the processes by which hierarchies persist over time (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). We speculate that power-based differences in sensitivity to unfairness may help to explain why divisions between the powerful and powerless are often remarkably resistant to change. Although experiencing unjust treatment can lead to disempowerment (Adams, 1965; Tepper, 2001), effectively responding to these situations (e.g., by seeking out more equitable outcomes) could enable the powerful to effectively maintain their higher social standing. Because the powerful are treated more fairly in general (Magee & Galinsky, 2008) and also act against unfair situations (as indicated by our findings), their repeated exposure to fair treatment could further fuel their entitlement and sensitivity to unfairness. Examining how such chronic experiences of power affect sensitivity to unfairness could be an interesting avenue for future research. Paradoxically, those who are most likely to be victims of justice violations—that is, powerless individuals—are comparatively slower to perceive and react to these unfair situations. Perhaps powerless individuals, through repeated experiences with inequity, become gradually desensitized to unfairness (a phenomenon akin to learned helplessness; Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). Thus, this differential attentiveness to unfairness may be one important mechanism by which hierarchies are maintained. The powerless may be less sensitive to unfairness, thereby becoming more vulnerable to exploitation. In contrast, powerful people’s greater sensitivity to unfairness against the self may allow them to react more quickly against unfair treatment and maintain their hold on power.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Benoît Monin for substantial feedback, and Eric L. Perkins and Niko L. Varella for their assistance with this research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant DGE-114747) and a Regina Casper Stanford Graduate Fellowship awarded to the first author.

Supplemental Material

The online supplemental material is available at .

Notes

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