The neural substrate of social power

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The neural substrate of social power Maarten Boksem1, 2*, R. Smolders1 and De Cremer D1, 2 1 Tilburg University, Netherlands 2 Center for Justice and Social Decision Making at Tilburg University, Netherlands Power is a driving force in social relationships. As central as power is to social life and to theoretical inquiries in the social sciences, it has received only sporadic attention from psychologists and even less from neuroscientists. In their recent review of the literature on power, Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson (2003) argued that power activates a general tendency to approach whereas powerlessness activates a general tendency to inhibit. Elevated power, they propose, involves reward-rich environments and freedom and, as a consequence, triggers approach-related positive affect and attention to rewards. In contrast, reduced power is associated with increased threat, punishment, and social constraint and thereby activates inhibition-related negative affect, and situationally constrained behavior. Davidson (1995) proposed a conceptualization of hemispheric lateralization of emotion processing, emphasizing an increased relative left sided activity during the experience of positive approach related emotions and an increased relative right sided activity during the experience of negative withdrawal emotions. Since power in the EEG alpha band is inversely related to brain activity, subtracting alpha power of the left prefrontal cortex from alpha power of the right has been proposed as an index of asymmetrical activation of frontal cortex. In the present study we measured alpha power from frontal electrode positions, while subjects engaged in a task priming either high or low social power. Results show that high social power is indeed associated with greater left-frontal brain activity compared to low social power, providing the first neural evidence for the theory that high power is associated with approach-related positive affect.