Behaviour variability and the situated focus theory of power

Power often affects judgement and behaviour differently in different contexts. The present chapter proposes the Situated Focus Theory of Power in an attempt to explain the greater variability in the behaviour and judgements of powerful compared to powerless individuals. It is proposed that power increases attunement to the situation by means of selective attention and processing flexibility. Factors that drive cognition such as motivation (e.g., needs, goals, expectancies), inner experiences (e.g., feelings, ease of retrieval), as well as properties of the environment (e.g., affordances), guide more unequivocally the responses of powerful compared to powerless individuals. Powerful individuals process more extensively information that is relevant compared to information that is irrelevant to these factors, whereas powerless individuals attend more equally to different types of information. These differences in processing focus affect content-free aspects of behaviour. Specifically, power promotes readiness to act, prioritisation, and behaviour variability across situations.