The Impact of Power Sense and Group Identity on Cooperation—Base on the Mediation Role of Social Distance

Jun-Long ZHANG

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2017, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (6) : 1412-1420.

PDF(2096 KB)
PDF(2096 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2017, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (6) : 1412-1420.

The Impact of Power Sense and Group Identity on Cooperation—Base on the Mediation Role of Social Distance

  • 1,Jun-Long ZHANG
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Abstract

Cooperation is a key issue in our human society. There are amounts of studies about influencing factors on cooperation , but rarely about exploring the impact of power directly on cooperation. Therefore, our study focuses on exploring the relationship between power sense and cooperation, and puts forward a regulated intermediary model, to examine the mediation role of social distance and the regulatory effect of group identity. We conduct three studies to test the hypotheses. In study 1, power sense is manipulated through recall task and measured cooperation degree with virtual public goods task to explore the relationship between power and cooperation directly. In study 2, we use role-play paradigm to control the power of participants, and record the cooperation indicator in single-round public goods dilemma, and adopt IOS scale to measure the social distance, examine the mediating role of social distance. In study 3, we manipulate power sense with the same way of study 2,investigate the cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma paradigm, and use minimal group paradigm to distinguish group identities, explore the regulatory effect of group identity in this experiment. This paper tells that: (1) the sense of power in the interactive context has negative prediction on the cooperative behavior,there is a significant difference in the cooperation between high and low power in the investment game tasks(t(101)=-2.89,p<0.05,d=0.58); (2) the social distance that individual perceive plays partly intermediary role between power and cooperation. The regression coefficient of power's impact on cooperation is -0.33 (p <0.05) and the regression coefficient of social distance on cooperation is -0.29 (p <0.05), which indicates that the mediating effect is significant .(3)The main effect of power sense on cooperation is significant (P = 1,78) = 14.82, p <0.001, η2 = 0.16, and the high-power(M = 0.39) is significantly lower than that of the low-power group (M = 0.55). The main effect of group identity is also significant, F (1,78) = 62.24, p <0.001, η2 = 0.45; the interaction between power and group identity is significant, F (1,78) = 5.29, p <0.05, η2 = 0.07. The group identity of the interactive object can adjust the relationship of power sense and cooperation . The results show that high-power experience will increase the individual's social distance perception and thus reduce co-operation in interpersonal interaction, group identity can alleviate the phenomenon. This study enriches the empirical research on the field of power behavior effect, explores the inherent mechanism of power influence cooperation, validates and expands the theory of social distance of power, lays the theoretical foundation for the follow-up study, and seeks the mitigation method for regulating this effect. In addition, it can help us to predict the behavioral tendencies of individuals in different situations accurately . Which is of great significance to reconcile the cooperative decision in reality.

Key words

power sense / social distance / group identity / cooperation, / mediation

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Jun-Long ZHANG. The Impact of Power Sense and Group Identity on Cooperation—Base on the Mediation Role of Social Distance[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2017, 40(6): 1412-1420
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