Power Facilitates Attentional Orienting

This study investigated how power impacts the ability to orient attention across space. Participants were assigned to a high power or control role and then performed a computerised spatial cueing task in which they were required to direct their attention to a target that had been preceded by either a valid or invalid location cue. Compared to participants in the control condition, power-holders were better able to override the misinformation provided by invalid cues. This advantage occurred only at 500 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), whereas at 1000 ms SOA, when there was more time to prepare a response, no differences were found. These findings are taken to support the growing idea that social power affects cognitive flexibility.