Abstract
ObjectiveWe conducted five studies testing whether an implicit measure of favorability toward power over universalism values predicts spontaneous prejudice and discrimination.MethodStudies 1 (N = 192) and 2 (N = 86) examined correlations between spontaneous favorability toward power (vs. universalism) values, achievement (vs. benevolence) values, and a spontaneous measure of prejudice toward ethnic minorities. Study 3 (N = 159) tested whether conditioning participants to associate power values with positive adjectives and universalism values with negative adjectives (or inversely) affects spontaneous prejudice. Study 4 (N = 95) tested whether decision bias toward female handball players could be predicted by spontaneous attitude toward power (vs. universalism) values. Study 5 (N = 123) examined correlations between spontaneous attitude toward power (vs. universalism) values, spontaneous importance toward power (vs. universalism) values, and spontaneous prejudice toward Black African people.ResultsSpontaneous positivity toward power (vs. universalism) values was associated with spontaneous negativity toward minorities and predicted gender bias in a decision task, whereas the explicit measures did not.ConclusionsThese results indicate that the implicit assessment of evaluative responses attached to human values helps to model value‐attitude‐behavior relations.
Highlights
Famous people throughout history have shown intense attachment to power while denying that they like power
After excluding Arab and Black African descendants, we combined the subsamples (N 5 165) by creating measures of French-national versus ethnic out-group attitude. We did this for three reasons: (a) the variable we were interested in was “out-group attitude,” and each group was a similar instance of an ethnic out-group; (b) this combination improves power; and (c) the power-universalism AV-Implicit Association Test (IAT) predicts implicit prejudice in each group separately
The results show that more spontaneous positivity to power on the AV-IAT was associated with a spontaneous negative attitude to the ethnic out-groups on the prejudice IAT
Summary
Famous people throughout history have shown intense attachment to power while denying that they like power. Centuries before Napoleon, Niccolo Machiavelli’s (1513/1981) classic treatise, The Prince, suggested that successful rulers must place power above virtue, occasionally using brutality and vice as tools, while not revealing their singular obsession with power to others. These examples show how either a sincere belief in selftranscending values (e.g., equality) or a mere desire to seem virtuous may lead power-accruing individuals to claim that power is unimportant to them. To others, they may look more like paragons of power than paragons of virtue. Focusing on power and equality in particular, we test whether implicit measures can contribute to the assessment of values
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