Week in Ideas
The Wall Street Journal:
Psychology
Big Shots
The figurative big man on campus may think he’s a literal big man, too.
To study the effects of power on perception, researchers measured the height of 100 male and female college students, gave them a bogus test purportedly measuring leadership ability, and then assigned them to serve as either a manager or an employee in a role-playing task.
The assignment was random, but the participants were told that it was based on leadership potential (the role-playing task never actually happened). After this set-up, the students gave personal information, including their height.
There was no difference in the actual height of the two groups, but the “high-power” participants rated themselves as taller than they were, and taller than the “low-power” participants did.
Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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