Lower Power Leads to Being More Influenced Than Higher Power During a Memory Conformity Task

Abstract

When people remember together, what one person says can affect what others report. The size of this effect is dependent on the characteristics of the people and how they express their beliefs. The power relationship among people affects much of their social cognition, including the size of this memory conformity effect. Some research has shown people conform more to high power individuals, but other research shows the opposite. The current research identified what we believe is an important difference in these studies in the type of power that was manipulated: evaluative versus managerial power. We manipulated both of these types of power. For both of these types, the low power individual was more influenced than the high power person. The study was designed to be like how people learn new vocabulary in an educational context. More research should take into account that people learn from other people in educational settings.