Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The experience of power is known to help people pursue their goals more effectively. It has been argued that this is becausethe powerful are better at managing working memory processes during goal pursuit. However, past research has oftendisregarded individual differences in working memory capacity. We examined how manipulated power affects peoplescognitive task performance, depending on their working memory capacity. Results showed that high-power participantswith a relatively lower capacity performed significantly better than low-power participants, whereas individuals with ahigher capacity performed equally well in both high- and low-power conditions. Thus, individuals with a relatively highercapacity were less affected by the experience of low power than individuals with a lower capacity, who in turn profittedmore from the experience of high power. Overall, our findings imply that individuals working memory capacity is animportant factor to consider in the power effect on cognitive task performance.