Self is up when you are powerful: Flexibility of self-concept

A growing body of evidence suggests that there is a close link between power and self. The sense of power could significantly affect the perceptions and judgments of self/others. For example, when in a powerful state, the individuals would overestimate their height and underestimate the other's height. It means that power affects the judgment and perception of self/others' physical height. The present study further examines whether the sense of power affects the spatial representation of self/other in three experiments using different paradigms. The results showed that participants in a powerful state responded faster to the self-related words at the top of the screen than at the bottom (Exp1), with an upward direction than with a downward direction (Exp2), and were more likely to choose an upward response after naming the self-related words than after naming the other-related words (Exp3), while these patterns were consistently reversed in a powerless state. This finding supports that the self/other is associated with the upper/lower space in the powerful state, and the self/other is associated with the lower/upper space in the powerless state. The present study enriches the literature on the psychological and behavioral effects of power, deepens the understanding of the mental representation of the self-concept from the perspective of power, and essentially provides new evidence for the flexibility of self-concept in humans.