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Lack of power enhances visual perceptual discrimination

Weick, M.; Guinote, A.; Wilkinson, D.T.

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Authors

A. Guinote

D.T. Wilkinson



Abstract

Powerless individuals face much challenge and uncertainty. As a consequence, they are highly vigilant and closely scrutinize their social environments. The aim of the present research was to determine whether these qualities enhance performance in more basic cognitive tasks involving simple visual feature discrimination. To test this hypothesis, participants performed a series of perceptual matching and search tasks involving colour, texture, and size discrimination. As predicted, those primed with powerlessness generated shorter reaction times and made fewer eye movements than either powerful or control participants. The results indicate that the heightened vigilance shown by powerless individuals is associated with an advantage in performing simple types of psychophysical discrimination. These findings highlight, for the first time, an underlying competency in perceptual cognition that sets powerless individuals above their powerful counterparts, an advantage that may reflect functional adaptation to the environmental challenge and uncertainty that they face.

Citation

Weick, M., Guinote, A., & Wilkinson, D. (2011). Lack of power enhances visual perceptual discrimination. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(3), 208-213. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024258

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Sep 30, 2011
Publication Date Sep 30, 2011
Deposit Date Sep 12, 2018
Publicly Available Date Sep 19, 2018
Journal Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology
Print ISSN 1196-1961
Electronic ISSN 1878-7290
Publisher American Psychological Association
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 65
Issue 3
Pages 208-213
DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024258
Related Public URLs http://kar.kent.ac.uk/27481/

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Copyright Statement
© 2011 APA, all rights reserved. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.





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