The Role of Power and Social Dominance Orientation on Empathy Master thesis, MSc Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
Abstract
The existing literature has demonstrated that elevated social power dampens one’s propensity to empathize with another person’s suffering. However, those studies neglected to investigate the role of characteristics (e.g., power) of their social targets in this power-empathy
relationship. The present study addresses this gap, testing the prediction that elevated power decreases one’s empathy response to the suffering of low-power targets, whereas increases empathy response to the suffering of high-power targets. In addition, this research examines whether this relationship is more pronounced among individuals with strong preferences in social hierarchy (social dominance orientation; SDO). ANOVA and moderation process analysis were conducted on the data from a sample of 112 participants. As expected, among participants with high SDO, compared to low-power participants, high-power participants exhibited greater empathy towards high-power targets, suggesting that unlike what existing literature has shown, high-power individuals with a strong preference for social hierarchy can particularly empathize with others in high power positions. The present study underscores the role of power of targets and individual differences in the preference for hierarchy and
inequality for understanding the power-empathy relationship.
Keywords: empathy, social power, social dominance orientation (SDO), moderation
The Role of Power and Social Dominance Orientation on Empathy The important role of leader empathy in organizational management has been repeatedly highlighted by numerous theorizing and research, such that leader empathy is positively associated with subordinates’ wellbeing, job performance and satisfaction, and leaders’ performance ratings and likeability (Kock et al., 2019; Meinecke & Kauffeld, 2018; Sadri, Weber & Gentry, 2011; Scott, Colquitt, Paddock, & Judge, 2010). Unfortunately, researchers have always seen power, what inherent in the leader role, reduces leaders’ abilities to empathize with others (French & Raven, 1959; van Kleef et al., 2008; Uskul, Paulmann & Weick, 2016; Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006). Moreover, power encourages stereotyping (Fiske, 1993), objectification of social targets (Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Kipnis, 1972) and dehumanization (Gwinn, Judd & Park, 2013; Lammers & Stapel, 2010). However, in reality, one can see abundant cases that powerful individuals do care for others. For example, when Paul Manafort, Ukrainian President’s ex-top advisor, President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman who was widely credited with helping Trump win the presidency in 2016, was sentenced to 73 months in prison for conspiracy against the US and obstruction of justice, Mr. Trump told reporters, “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort. I think it’s been a very, very tough time for him”. This example highlights an interesting tension: on the one hand, the powerful are considered to be less dispositionally empathic and caring than the powerless. Yet such anecdotal evidence suggests high-power individuals can empathize, particularly with similar others in high-power positions.
2016; Côté et al., 2011; Lammers & Stapel, 2011) or a target without a specified power level (e.g., van Kleef et al., 2008; Uskul et al., 2016). By their nature, these studies cannot
disentangle whether high-power individuals empathize differently between powerful and less powerful targets.
It is clear that what power affords is different for each individual, therefore, some people are inclined to power pursuing and attach greater importance than others to the benefits of power. The present study proposes that such individual differences shape the link between power and empathy. Social dominance studies have suggested that an individual’s social dominance orientation (SDO) could influence this relationship (Pratto et al.,
1994). SDO, referring to the extent to which people support group-based inequalities, is an ideological variable that reflects a competitive world view (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). People who are higher in SDO are inclined to strict hierarchical differentiation and endorse a wide range of hierarchy-enhancing attitudes (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). I argue that high-power individuals in higher SDO would particularly feel empathetic towards other powerful targets and rarely feel empathetic towards the powerless targets because they blame situational factors (i.e., environment) for misfortune of the powerful, while dispositional factors (i.e., personality) for misfortune of the powerless. In contrast, individuals score lower in SDO disregard maintaining and increasing their hierarchy regardless of their own power (e.g., Altemeyer, 1998; Duriez & Van Hiel, 2002; Son Hing et al., 2007), therefore, their levels of empathy would not be influenced by the power of their own and their targets. To sum up, I expect that individual differences in SDO will serve as an important contingency variable for the joint role of the power of individuals and the power of targets for experienced empathy (see Figure 1 for the conceptual model).
Kleef et al., 2008; Uskul, Paulmann & Weick, 2016). Building on this research, the present study aims to investigates the moderating role of the power of their social targets (referred as the power of targets) on the link between the power of individuals (referred as the power of agents) and their experienced empathy. Specifically, I anticipate that high-power agents would feel more empathy than low-power agents in response to high-power targets’ suffering, while high-power agents would feel less empathy than power agents in response to low-power targets’ suffering. Lastly, the present study aims to examine SDO as a moderator of agent-target power interaction on experienced empathy. Specifically, I anticipate that this interactive effect is stronger among agents with higher SDO.
The present research has important theoretical implications. Firstly, this paper calls into question on the negligence of targets’ essential role in the link between power and empathy. In other words, researchers on power should take a broader perspective by examining empathy not only in the asymmetric (i.e., upwards and downwards) power relationships but also in symmetric (i.e., high-power peers and low-power peers) power relationships. Secondly, a number of authors have emphasized that one ‘dark side’ of empathy: empathy is parochial, such that empathy is stronger for similar targets (Bloom, 2013, 2014; Prinz, 2011; Batson, 2011). However, I expect my findings would suggest that this parochialism argument only follows for high-SDO individuals.
I expect the present study to have practical implications in a legal professional context, such that it would suggest that judges and prosecutors who possess higher SDO particularly empathize with high-power defenders than those possess lower SDO, which could seriously hinder legal objectivity and impartiality.
Figure 1
particularly among individuals with strong preferences in social inequality, elevated power increases empathy response to the suffering of high-power targets, while decreases empathy response to the suffering of low-power targets.
Theory and Hypotheses Power and Empathy
In the research that is most relevant to the present study, power has most often been defined as realized end-result domination, that is, in some interaction or judgment tasks, the "high-power" person has power over others to determine the outcomes of some target (cf. Copeland, 1994; Fiske & Dépret , 1996; Sachdev & Bourhis, 1985). This is an appropriate way to discuss social power, which is defined as the ability to control or influence others in an interdependent relationship. Social power (referred as power below) is different from personal power which refers to the ability of one person to ignore the influence of others with agency (Van Dijke & Poppe, 2006).
Broadly speaking, the term “empathy” indicates the response of an individual from the perceived experience of others. In the present study, empathy refers to state empathic concern, defined as an emotional expression of sympathy and concern when seeing someone in need, which is distinct from other empathy constructs (e.g., Stocks et al. 2011; Woltin et al. 2011). The first hypothesis of the present study, in line with previous research, is that high-power individuals show less empathy towards others than low-power individuals when perceiving others’ suffering.
Social dominance orientation of the agent
High-power individuals are expected to show little empathy when seeing others’ suffering for two reasons. First, according to approach/inhibition theory of power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), the experience of power involves the awareness that one can behave at his or her own will without severe social impacts or barriers (Weber, 1947). High-power individuals have fewer social constraints and more resource-rich environments than other people, therefore, they are more independent and invest less in interactions than others (De Dreu & van Kleef, 2004). Their responsiveness to others’ misery is compromised due to a lack of motivation for connections (van Kleef., et al, 2008). Second, by deflating people who have less power, the powerful convey the message that those with less power are less worthy of resources, and they deserve their inferior ranking in the social hierarchy (e.g. Fiske, 1993; Jost, Banaji & Nosek, 2004; Pratto, Sidanius & Levin, 2006). Therefore, it is logical that high-power individuals disregard the feelings of the less high-powerful individuals and through which they justify lower positions of others.
In sum, on the basis of considerations and given previous research, this current study is expected to replicate previous research findings.
Hypothesis 1: The elevated power of agents decreases their empathy response towards the suffering of their targets.
The Moderating Role of the Power of the Target
I anticipate that the power of targets plays a moderating role in the link between power of agents and empathy. Specifically, comparing to low-power individuals, high-power
individuals would empathize more with high-power targets while empathize less with low-power targets. There are two main reasons why I expect high-low-power individuals would empathize more with high-power targets than low-power individuals. According to ego justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), people have the desire to create and maintain a positive self-image and to feel justified, valid and legitimate as an individual person. By showing empathetic responses towards the suffering of powerful targets, high-power individuals legitimate the superior positions of high-power targets and in turn give grounds for their own superior positions in order to achieve self-assurance (Georgesen & Harris, 2006; Pratto et al., 2006). Secondly, relevant research has suggested that the similarity between involved parties is essential in empathic tendencies. For instance, Grover and Brockner (1989) demonstrated that matching a target on the attitude of the self led to increased attraction and empathy. Houston (1990) demonstrated that affective and cognitive similarity increased cognitive and emotional empathy. Similarly, Nelson, Klein, and Irvin (2003) found that observers tended to interpret the response of a distressed target as reasonable and reported more empathic concern towards the target when target-observer shared similar perspectives than when their viewpoints were in discrepancy.
power would empathize moderately towards both low-power and high-power because of shared similar positions with other low-power individuals and superior positions of the powerful, respectively (Nelson, Klein & Irvin, 2003; Jost et al., 2014). Specifically, Nelson and his colleagues (2003) suggested that the similarity between involved parties was
positively related to empathic tendencies, therefore, low-power individuals would be able to relate to other low-power individuals, whereas low-power individuals in unequal power relationships tended to think about their relationship in an instrumental way (Schaerer et al., 2018), therefore, aiming to achieve their goals, they empathize with high-power individuals. To sum up:
Hypothesis 2: The power of agents and the power of targets interact to influence empathy response to the suffering of the targets, such that the elevated power of agents decreases their empathy towards low-power targets, while increases their empathy towards high-power targets.
The Moderating Role of Social Dominance Orientation
incentive to preserve and strengthen group-based dominance and inequality (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Researchers have also argued that this tendency for justifying unequal power relations may apply regardless of an individual’s power position, which means that low-power individuals may also endorse existing power relations (Sidanius, Levin, Federico, & Pratto, 2001; Jost & Burgess, 2000; Overbeck, Jost, Mosso, & Flizik, 2004). Furthermore, social dominants justify various attitudes, actions, and policies that strengthen social hierarchy such as anti-immigration policies, xenophobia, sexism, even when they are in a low-power position (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sibley, Wilson, & Duckitt, 2007; Thomsen, Green, & Sidanius, 2008).
Sidanius and Pratto (1999) have suggested that SDO orients individuals to seek for the most socially suitable way of justifying group inequality as normative and acceptable by supporting a wide variety of legitimising myths. Legitimising myths are ‘consensually held values, attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, and cultural ideologies’ (Pratto, Sidanius & Levin, 2006). Examples include myriad forms of racism, sexism, heterosexism, stereotypes, and internal attributions for poverty, etc. These legitimising myths have a common perception that dominant and subordinate groups merit their relative superior and inferior positions in the social hierarchy. High-SDO individuals endorse hierarchy-enhancing legitimising myth, which provides moral and intellectual justification for group-based inequality and persecutions.
external attributions rather than internal ones. Therefore, he or she comes to believe that low-power targets are accountable for their own suffering, while high-low-power targets do not
deserve their misfortune in order to develop a favorable image of themselves and to legitimate and justify the existing social order. As a result, I expect high-power individuals score high in SDO express less empathy towards low-power targets, whereas expressing more empathy towards high-power targets.
Individuals score low in SDO disregard maintaining and increasing their hierarchy regardless of their power position (e.g., Altemeyer, 1998; Duriez & Van Hiel, 2002; Son Hing et al., 2007), therefore, their levels of empathy would be less influenced by the power of their own and their targets than individuals high in SDO. On the basis of the preceding arguments and research evidence, the present study hypothesizes the following:
Method Participants
This study used an experimental scenario design. Total 118 participants who were all students from the University of Groningen were recruited. Participants received 8 euro or 5 research points as their participation rewards. To further ensure data quality, the present study included a manipulation check and an attention check (see below). Three participants were excluded because they failed the attention check and three participants were excluded due to incomplete responses, and no participants failed the manipulation check. The data analysis was conducted using 112 participants (Mage = 21.60, SD = 2.91, 75.9% female). There were fewer samples than my anticipation because the Faculty of Business and Economics Business Research Lab where the study was conducted was forced to shut down during data collection period due to Covid-19 health emergency.
Study Design
To test my hypotheses, this study utilized a 2 (Power agent: High power vs. Low power) x 2 (Power target: High power vs. Low power) factorial design. The between subject variable was the power level of agents, and the within subject variable was the power level of targets. The dependent variable was the level of empathy towards low-power targets and high-power targets.
Procedures and Manipulations
Participants were invited to take part in a Lego building group task. Prior to
participation, they received instructions about the study and were asked to sign an informed consent to ensure that the participation was voluntary, anonymous, and confidential.
nearby. The experimenter told participants that they would perform the team tasks in this room. In fact, experiments ended before they would perform the task. A photo of the room was available in the appendix. Participation in the experiment lasted about 15 minutes. Power Manipulation of the Agent
The procedure for manipulating positions of power was adapted from Anderson and Berdahl’s study (2002). Participants were informed that they would be doing a group coordination task, and the task required one person to be the leader and the other three participants to be the builders. Participants read instructions that leader would have the complete control over the work process and the evaluation of builders, while builders would have neither control over how the work would be done nor the evaluation process, and their role would be based on their scores of “Leadership Questionnaire” (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002). This “Leadership Questionnaire” asked participants to report their grade point average, five leadership positions they held before, and a number of personality measures about
themselves. After completing the “Leadership Questionnaire”, participants were informed that he or she was assigned to the role of leader (high-power agent condition, coded as “1”) or the role of builder (low-power agent condition, coded as “0”). In fact, their roles were randomly assigned.
Power Manipulation of the Target
Measures
Social Dominance Orientation
SDO measure was included in the “Leadership Questionnaire”. SDO was measured by the 16-item SDO6 Scale (see Pratto and colleagues, 1994) and consists of items such as (a) “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups” and (b) “To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups”. Cronbach’s alpha was .87.
Empathy
To measure emotional responses, participants indicated how much they felt
compassion, sympathy, empathy, sadness, and concern for the target on a 7-point Likert scale
(1 = Completely disagree, 7 = Completely agree), α = .96 (Batson, 1991; Batson, Sager, et al., 1997).
Attention Checks
To safeguard data quality, we included an attention check in the “Leadership
Questionnaire” in which participants were asked to “please click answer option 1”. Another attention check after the measurement of the dependent variable, such that participants were asked to select which role they were assigned to based on the Leadership questionnaire. Participants were only included in our final sample if they accurately selected the respective answer option.
Manipulation Check
Results Preliminary Test
The data has no outliers, as assessed by examination of standardized residuals for values greater than ±3. The data was normally distributed, as assessed by normal Q-Q plot. Levene’s test was employed to investigate the assumptions of homogeneity of variances and revealed no violation (High-Power Targets: p = .69; Low-Power Targets: p = .72). Box’s test revealed a homogeneity of covariances (p = .59). α = .87. Notably, inclusion of covariates did not alter the pattern of the results or influence the substantive conclusions.1
Manipulation Check
The power manipulation was successful. Participants in the high-power condition reported feel more powerful (M = 6.06, SD = .95) than participants in the low-power condition (M = 1.82, SD = 1.17, F(1,110) = 504.33, p < .001). Cronbach’s alpha of three manipulation check items was .96.
Hypotheses Test
A 2 (power of agents: high power vs. low power) × 2 (power of targets: high power vs. low power) mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to investigate the impact of power of agents and power of targets on empathy. Failing to support hypothesis 1, insignificant main effect of power levels of agents on empathy was found, F(1,110) = .65, p = .42, ηp2 = .01. Furthermore, failing to support hypothesis 2, no significant interaction effect between power of agents and power of targets on empathy was found, F(1,110) = .17, p = .68, ηp2 = .002 (see Table 1). Surprisingly, there were significant differences between empathy towards high-power targets and empathy towards low-power targets, F(1,110) = 16.77, p <
0.01, ηp2 = .13. It means that overall speaking, low-power targets (M = 3.77 SD = .13) received more empathy than high-power targets (M = 3.36, SD = .13).
To test hypothesis 3, moderation process analyses in SPSS using Model 1 of the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2017) was conducted with bias-corrected bootstrapping and 5000 resamples. I entered power levels of agents as the independent variable, SDO as a moderator and empathy towards low- and high-power targets as the dependent variable, respectively. Two separate analyses on empathy towards low-power targets (see Table 2) and high-power targets (see Table 3) were conducted. Analysis on empathy towards low-power targets showed no significant interaction effect (B = .44, SE = .26, p = .10). Analysis on empathy towards high-power targets showed a significant interaction effect (B = .81, SE = .36, p = .03). Further analyses on empathy towards high-power targets revealed the expected significantly positive simple slope for the power-empathy relationship among individuals with higher SDO (+1 SD; B = .81, t(108) = 2.26, p = .03, 95% CI [ .10, 1.52]). Partially supporting my
Table 1
Results for The Moderation Analysis of Target Power in The Relationship Between Agent Power and Empathy
Source df F η2 p
Between Subjects
Actor power 1 .65 .01 .42
Within Subjects
Target power 1 16.77*** .13 < .001
Actor power × Target power 1 .17 .00 .68
Note. df = degree of freedom. *p <.05. ***p <.001.
Table 2
The Effects of Agent Power Condition, SDO and Their Interaction on Empathy towards Low-Power Targets
Empathy towards low-power targets
B SE B CI 95%
Agent Power .15 .26 [-.36, .66]
SDO -.22 .18 [-.58, .14]
Agent Power × SDO .44 .26 [-.08, .95]
Agent Power simple effects
Low SDO -.33 .38 [-1.09, .43]
High SDO .59 .37 [-.14, 1.32]
Note. The low power actor condition was coded (0) and the high-power agent condition was
Table 3
The Effects of Agent Power Condition, SDO and Their Interaction on Empathy towards High-Power Targets
Empathy towards high-power targets
B SE B CI 95%
Agent Power .23 .25 [-.27, .73]
SDO -.28 .18 [-.63,.07]
Agent Power × SDO .57* .25 [.07, 1.07]
Agent Power simple effects
Low SDO -.40 .37 [-1.14, .34]
High SDO .81* .36 [.10, 1.52]
Note. The low power actor condition was coded (0) and the high-power agent condition was
Discussion and Conclusion
The present study firstly aims to replicate the prior research finding that elevated social power of individuals decreases one’s empathy towards the suffering of their social targets (van Kleef et al., 2008). Beyond replication, this study attempts to examine whether this power-empathy linkage was contingent on the power of their targets. Lastly, the present study aims to examine SDO as a moderator of agent-target power interaction on experienced empathy. In particular, this interactive effect should be more pronounced for individuals high in SDO, such that particularly among individuals higher (not lower) in SDO, elevated power would increase empathy response to high-power targets’ suffering, while decrease empathy response to low-power targets’ suffering.
The data showed an expected positive power-empathy relationship among participants with higher SDO towards high-power targets, revealing that high-power individuals who support social hierarchy can particularly empathize with high-power others. This conclusion is compatible with recent work indicating that high-power people are not insensitive to other’s emotions, but react selectively to these emotions when doing so can be beneficial for
themselves (van Kleef & Côté, 2007). This study is an important extension of the literature on power and empathy and my findings inform contextual and individual factors on this linkage. Theoretical Implications
Firstly, my findings advance theory on power and empathy by emphasizing that the power–empathy linkage may be more complex than previously thought, with both contextual factors (power of targets) and individual differences in the preference for group-based
Inzlicht, 2010; Xu, Zuo, Wang, and Han, 2009; for reviews, see Cikara, Bruneau, and Saxe, 2011; Dovidio et al., 2010). However, failing to support this account, my results align with recent studies suggesting that equality encourages to operate similarly across others with similar and dissimilar characteristics (e.g., Kteily, Sheehy-Skeffington and Ho, 2017), and support that the desirability of hierarchy are more proximal than similarity in predicting differential empathy towards others.
Practical Implications
From a practical perspective, my results concern the risk of bias due to the use of empathy in the context of justice. Despite as a fundamental principle of a legal system, judges and prosecutors must not be biased in any cases, they inevitably do consider empathy in the performance of their duties. In a legal professional context, empathy has been found to be relevant to the process of decision making by professional actors (Abrams, 2010; Bandes, 2009; Brennan, 1988; Henderson, 1987; Nussbaum, 1996), and management of the parties in court (Darbyshire, 2011; Roach Anleu & Mack, 2013). According to the current
research, judges and prosecutors who in favor of social hierarchy would particularly
empathize with high-power defenders. In order to avoid the potential for bias counteracting objectivity and impartiality (Abrams, 2010; Bandes, 2006, 2009; Fisher, 1987), it would be highly beneficial to not only keep in mind of the impact of emotions in legal professions and incorporate emotion management in their education and training, but also filter out candidates with high SDO during selection.
Limitations and Future Research
the physical appearance of targets who participants extended their empathy with. On the contrary, many power studies concluded their results based on experiments in which the respondents interacted with targets in person. For example, in one study that examined whether elevated social power was associated with diminished empathy, participants seated facing one another and reported their empathy after listening to the stories their partners talked about (van Kleef et al., 2008). Previous research has suggested that the face is “the emotion highway” (De Waal, 2009, p. 83). People depend on this highway to build the quickest connection to the other, therefore physical appearance might be necessary to evoke empathy (Cole, 2001). Lacking human appearance may cause the failure of enhancing the capacity of the brain to stimulate the perspective-taking of others, which leads to failure of activation of empathy (Cole, 2001, Preston and de Waal, 2002). Therefore, future research might consider how human appearance moderates the link between power and empathy. For instance, the negative relationship between power and empathy is less pronounced when the respondents interact with the target in person.
Another two limitations of this study concern the nature of the story used in the study. Firstly, I purposefully used mild stories that do not influence the social hierarchy dynamics directly. It is unknown whether the effect on empathy reflects the upper or low bound of empathic modulation. For instance, does power predict empathy when targets suffer from extreme adversity? Or did the mild nature of the events reduce the differences in the levels of empathy reported by high-power and low-power individuals? Therefore, another future direction is to examine whether our findings would replicate if the events happened to targets are more extreme. Furthermore, future research could examine the consequence on empathy if the event people read had direct implications for the social hierarchy (e.g., The target lost his or her job). As these are the type of events that strengthen or dismantle current social
inequality, it could be interesting to investigate how the link between power and empathy is moderated by social hierarchy dynamics of targets. Secondly, many research found that people felt less empathetic towards targets who were viewed as having accountability or the control over their own suffering (Rudolph, Roesch, Greitemeyer, and Weiner, 2004).
Therefore, it is reasonable that participants reported less empathy response to the suffering of high-power individuals than low-power individuals because participants were told that the high-power individual (the leader) had complete control over the work process and
performance evaluation of the low-power individuals (the builders).
One more limitation is that I only included one manipulation check of the perceived amount of power of the participants him/herself, but failed to include measurement of the perceived amount of power of the targets. Therefore, it is unknown whether participants perceived high-power targets significantly more powerful than low-power targets.
Future research could investigate the influences of power of targets and on the link between power and perspective-taking. Galinsky and his colleagues (2006) found that power was associated with increased difficulty in taking other individuals’ perspectives, arguing that power reduced perspective-taking partially because perspective-taking was positively related to the similarity between the self and others (Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996), while power led to a cognitive separation between the self and other (Lee & Tiedens, 2001).
However, I propose that this relationship is contingent on the power of targets. Specifically, I expect high-power individuals are more likely to take perspectives of other high-power targets than low-power individuals are, resulting from the high similarities and little cognitive
distance between two high-power individuals. Conclusion
References
Abrams, K. (2010). Empathy and experience in the Sotomayor hearings. Ohio North
University Law Review, 36, 263–286.
Altemeyer, B. (1998). The other ‘‘authoritarian personality.’’ In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances
in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 48 – 92). San Diego, CA: Academic
Press.
Anderson, C., & Berdahl, J. L. (2002). The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 83(6), 1362–1377. https://doi-org.proxy-ub.rug.nl/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1362
Avenanti, A., Sirigu, A., & Aglioti, S. M. (2010). Racial bias reduces empathic sensorimotor resonance with other-race pain. Current Biology, 20, 1018–1022
Bandes, S. (2006). Loyalty to one's convictions: The prosecutor and tunnel vision. Howard
Law Journal, 49, 475–494.
Bandes, S. A. (2009). Empathetic judging and the rule of law. Cardozo Law Review De Novo, 133–148. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1431230
Batson, C. D. (1991). The altruism question: Toward a social-psychological answer. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Blader, S. L., Shirako, A., & Chen, Y.-R. (2016). Looking out from the top: Differential effects of status and power on perspective taking. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 42(6), 723–737.
Bloom, P. (2013). The baby in the well. New Yorker (New York, N.Y.), 20. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/the-baby-in-the-well
Brennan Jr., W. J. (1988). Reason, passion, and the progress of the law. Cardozo Law Review,
10, 3–23. Burkitt,
Cikara, M., Bruneau, E., & Saxe, R. (2011). Us and them: Intergroup failures of empathy.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 149–153.
Cikara, M., Bruneau, E., Van Bavel, J. J., & Saxe, R. (2014). Their pain gives us plea -sure: How intergroup dynamics shape empathic failures and counter-empathic responses.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 110–125
Cole, J. (2001). Empathy needs a face. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(5-7), 51–68. Copeland, J. T. (1994). Prophecies of power: motivational implications of social power for
behavioral confirmation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 264-277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.2.264
Côté, S., Kraus, M. W., Cheng, B. H., Oveis, C., van der Löwe, I., Lian, H., & Keltner, D. (2011). Social power facilitates the effect of prosocial orientation on empathic accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 217–232. Darbyshire, P. (2011). Sitting in judgment: The working lives of judges. Oxford: Hart. Davis, M. H., Conklin, L., Smith, A., & Luce, C. (1996). Effect of perspective taking on the
cognitive representation of persons: A merging of self and other. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 70(4), 713–726. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.4.713
De Dreu, C. K. W., & van Kleef, G. A. (2004). The influence of power on the information search, impression formation, and demands in negotiation. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 40(3), 303–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.07.004 DeCelles, K. A., DeRue, D. S., Margolis, J. D., & Ceranic, T. L. (2012). Does power corrupt
or enable? When and why power facilitates self-interested behavior. Journal of
Dovidio, J. F., Johnson, J. D., Gaertner, S. L., Pearson, A. R., Saguy, T., & Ashburn-Nardo, L. (2010). Empathy and intergroup relations. In M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver (Eds.),
Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior (pp. 393–408). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
Duckitt, J. and Sibley, C.G. (2010), Personality, Ideology, Prejudice, and Politics: A Dual‐ Process Motivational Model. Journal of Personality, 78: 1861-1894.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00672.x
Duriez, B., & Van Hiel, A. (2002). The march of modern fascism. A comparison of social dominance orientation and authoritarianism. Personality and Individual Differences,
32(7), 1199–1213. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00086-1
Fisher, S. Z. (1987). in search of the virtuous prosecutor: A conceptual framework. American
Journal of Criminal Law, 15, 197–261.
Fiske, S. T. (1993). Controlling other people: The impact of power on stereotyping. American
Psychologist, 48(6), 621–628. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.6.621 French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright
(Ed.), Studies in social power (p. 150–167). Univer. Michigan.
Frijda, N. H. (2007). The laws of emotion. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Galinsky, A. D., Magee, J. C., Gruenfeld, D. H, Whitson, J. A., & Liljenquist, K. A. (2008).
Power reduces the press of the situation: Implications for creativity, conformity, and dissonance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1450–
1466. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012633
Georgesen, J., & Harris, M. J. (2006). Holding onto power: Effects of powerholders' positional instability and expectancies on interactions with subordinates. European
Journal of Social Psychology, 36(4), 451–468. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.352 Giberson, T., Resick, C., Dickson, M., Mitchelson, J., Randall, K., & Clark, M. (2009). Leadership and organizational culture: Linking CEO characteristics to cultural values. Journal of Business and Psychology, 24(2), 123-137.
www.jstor.org/stable/27753894
Gonzaga, G. C., Keltner, D., & Ward, D. (2008). Power in mixed-sex stranger interactions. Cognition and Emotion, 22(8), 1555–
1568. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930801921008
Grover, Steven & Brockner, Joel. (1989). Empathy and the relationship between attitudinal similarity and attraction. Journal of Research in Personality, 23, 469-479.
doi:10.1016/0092-6566(89)90015-9.
Gruenfeld, D. H., Inesi, M. E., Magee, J. C., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Power and the objectification of social targets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 111–127.
Guinote, A. (2007). Power and goal pursuit. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 33(8), 1076–1087. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207301011
Gutsell, J. N., & Inzlicht, M. (2010). Empathy constrained: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 46, 841–845
Gwinn, J. D., Judd, C. M., & Park, B. (2013). Less power = less human? Effects of power differentials on dehumanization. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 464–470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.01.005
Ho, Arnold & Sidanius, Jim & Pratto, Felicia & Levin, Shana & Thomsen, Lotte & Kteily, Nour & Sheehy-Skeffington, Jennifer. (2012). Social dominance orientation: Revisiting the structure and function of a variable predicting social and political attitudes. Personality & social psychology bulletin. 38, 583-606.
10.1177/0146167211432765.
Houston, D. A. (1990). Empathy and the self: Cognitive and emotional influences on the evaluation of negative affect in others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
59, 859-868.
Jost, J. T., & Burgess, D. (2000). Attitudinal ambivalence and the conflict between group and system justification motives in low status groups. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 26(3), 23–305. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167200265003
Jost, J.T., Nam, H.H., Amodio, D.M. and Van Bavel, J.J. (2014), Political Neuroscience.
Political Psychology, 35, 3-42. doi:10.1111/pops.12162
Jost, John & Banaji, Mahzarin & Nosek, Brian. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25.
Keltner, D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Anderson, C. (2003). Power, approach, and
inhibition. Psychological Review, 110(2), 265–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.2.265
Kipnis, D. (1972). Does power corrupt? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24(1), 33–41. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0033390
Kteily, N. S., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., & Ho, A. K. (2017). Hierarchy in the eye of the
beholder: (Anti-)egalitarianism shapes perceived levels of social inequality. Journal of personality and social psychology, 112(1), 136–159.
https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000097
Kteily, N., Ho, A. K., & Sidanius, J. (2012). Hierarchy in the mind: The predictive power of social dominance orientation across social contexts and domains. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 48(2), 543
549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.11.007
Lammers, J., & Stapel, D. A. (2011). Power increases dehumanization. Group Processes &
Intergroup Relations, 14(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430210370042 Lee, F., & Tiedens, L. Z. (2001). Who's being served? "Self-serving" attributions in social hierarchies. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 84(2), 254– 287. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.2000.2925
McFarland, S. G., & Adelson, S. (1996, July). An omnibus study of personality values and prejudices. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Society for Political Psychology, Vancouver, Canada.
McFarland, S.G. (2010). Authoritarianism, social dominance, and other roots of generalized prejudice. Political Psychology, 31, 453–477.
Meinecke, A.L., Kauffeld, S. (2019). Engaging the Hearts and Minds of Followers: Leader Empathy and Language Style Matching During Appraisal Interviews. J Bus
Psychol 34, 485–501. https://doi-org.proxy-ub.rug.nl/10.1007/s10869-018-9554-9 Nadler, Arie. (2002). Inter–group helping relations as power relations: Maintaining or
challenging social dominance between groups through helping. Journal of Social
Nelson, D. W., Klein, C. T. F., & Irvin, J. E. (2003). Motivational antecedents of empathy: Inhibiting effects of fatigue. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 25(1), 37– 50. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15324834BASP2501_3
Nicol, A. A. M., & Rounding, K. (2013). Alienation and empathy as mediators of the relation between social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism and expressions of racism and sexism. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(3), 294–
299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.03.009
Nussbaum, M. c. (1996). Emotion in the language of judging. St. John's Law Review, 70, 23– 30.
Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., & Levin, S. (2006). Social dominance theory and the dynamics of intergroup relations: Taking stock and looking forward. European Review of Social
Psychology, 17, 271–320. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463280601055772 Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994). Social dominance
orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 741–763. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.741
Preston, S. D., & de Waal, F. B. (2002). Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. The
Behavioral and brain sciences, 25(1), 1–71.
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x02000018
Prinz, j. (2011), Against empathy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49: 214-233. doi:10.1111/j.2041-6962.2011.00069.x
Roach Anleu, S., & Mack, K. (2013). Judicial authority and emotion work. Judicial Review:
Selected Conference Papers: Journal of the Judicial Commission of New South Wales,
Rudolph, U., Roesch, S. C., Greitemeyer, T., & Weiner, B. (2004). A meta-analytic review of help giving and aggression from an attributional perspective: Contributions to a general theory of motivation. Cognition and Emotion, 18(6), 815–
848. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930341000248
Sachdev, I. and Bourhis, R.Y. (1985), Social categorization and power differentials in group relations. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 15: 415-434. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420150405
Sadri, G., Weber, T. J., & Gentry, W. A. (2011). Empathic emotion and leadership
performance: An empirical analysis across 38 countries. The Leadership Quarterly,
22(5), 818–830. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.07.005
Schaerer, M., du Plessis, C., Yap, A. J., & Thau, S. (2018). Low power individuals in social power research: A quantitative review, theoretical framework, and empirical
test. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 149, 73– 96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.08.004
Scott, Brent & Colquitt, Jason & Paddock, E & A. Judge, Timothy. (2010). A daily
investigation of the role of manager empathy on employee well-being. Organizational
Behavior & Human Decision Processes. 113. 127-140.
doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2010.08.001.
Sibley, C. G., Wilson, M. S., & Duckitt, J. (2007). Antecedents of men’s hostile and benevolent sexism: The dual roles of social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(2), 160–
172. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206294745
Sidanius, J., Cotterill, S., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Kteily, N., & Carvacho, H. (2017). Social dominance theory: Explorations in the psychology of oppression. In C. G. Sibley & F. K. Barlow (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of the psychology of prejudice (p. 149– 187). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316161579.008 Sidanius, J., Levin, S., Federico, C. M., & Pratto, F. (2001). Legitimizing ideologies: The
social dominance approach. In J. T. Jost & B. Major (Eds.), The psychology of
legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup relations (p.
307–331). Cambridge University Press.
Sidanius, Jim & Pratto, Felicia. (1999). Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139175043.
Son Hing, L. S., Bobocel, D. R., Zanna, M. P., & McBride, M. V. (2007). Authoritarian dynamics and unethical decision making: High social dominance orientation leaders and high right-wing authoritarianism followers. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 92(1), 67–81. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.67
Stocks, E.L., Lishner, D.A., Waits, B.L. and Downum, E.M. (2011), I'm Embarrassed for You: The Effect of Valuing and Perspective Taking on Empathic Embarrassment and Empathic Concern. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41: 1-26.
doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00699.x
Susan T. Fiske & Eric Dépret (1996). Control, interdependence and power: Understanding social cognition in its social context. European Review of Social Psychology, 7:1, 31-61, doi: 10.1080/14792779443000094
Susan T. Fiske & Eric Dépret (1996) Control, Interdependence and Power: Understanding Social Cognition in Its Social Context, European Review of Social
Thomsen, L., Green, E. G. T., & Sidanius, J. (2008). We will hunt them down: How social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism fuel ethnic persecution of immigrants in fundamentally different ways. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 44(6), 1455–1464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.06.011
Uskul, A. K., Paulmann, S., & Weick, M. (2016). Social power and recognition of emotional prosody: High power is associated with lower recognition accuracy than low
power. Emotion, 16(1), 11–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000110
Van Dijke, M., & Poppe, M. (2006). Striving for personal power as a basis for social power dynamics. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36(4), 537–
556. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.351
Van Kleef, G. A., & Côté, S. (2007). Expressing anger in conflict: When it helps and when it hurts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(6), 1557–1569. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.6.1557
Van Kleef, G. A., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2004). The interpersonal effects of Anger and Happiness in Negotiations. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 86(1), 57–76. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.1.57
Van Kleef, G. A., De Dreu, C. K. W., Pietroni, D., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2006). Power and emotion in negotiation: Power moderates the interpersonal effects of anger and
happiness on concession making. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36(4), 557– 581. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.320
Van Kleef, G. A., Oveis, C., van der Löwe, I., LuoKogan, A., Goetz, J., & Keltner, D. (2008). Power, distress, and compassion: Turning a blind eye to the suffering of
Waal, F. B. M. d. 1. (2009). The age of empathy: nature's lessons for a kinder society. New York: Harmony Books.
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization (S. M. Henderson & T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Whitley, B. E., Jr. (1999). Right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(1), 126–
134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.1.126
Woltin, K. A., Corneille, O., Yzerbyt, V. Y., & Förster, J. (2011). Narrowing down to open up for other people’s concerns: Empathic concern can be enhanced by inducing detailed processing. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 418–424.
Appendices
