Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2009, Vol. 97, No.

2, 279 289

2009 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0015437

How Power Influences Moral Thinking

Joris Lammers and Diederik A. Stapel
Tilburg University
The authors conducted 5 studies to test the idea that both thinking about and having power affects the way in which people resolve moral dilemmas. It is shown that high power increases the use of rule-based (deontological) moral thinking styles, whereas low power increases reliance on outcome-based (consequentialist) moral thinking. Stated differently, in determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the consequences. For this reason, the powerful are also more inclined to stick to the rules, irrespective of whether this has positive or negative effects, whereas the powerless are more inclined to make exceptions. The first 3 experiments show that thinking about power increases rule-based thinking and decreases outcome-based thinking in participants moral decision making. A 4th experiment shows the mediating role of moral orientation in the effect of power on moral decisions. The 5th experiment demonstrates the role of self-interest by showing that the powermoral link is reversed when rule-based decisions threaten participants own self-interests. Keywords: power and moral thinking, rule-based, outcome-based, deontological, consequentialism

In their professional lives, people are often in a position in which they have to make a judgment or a decision on some moral issue that affects other people. To give an example, imagine a teacher at a secondary school who is giving a course on writing skills that involves writing an essay. When the deadline approaches, the teacher is confronted by a student who suffered from an attack of migraine over the weekend and did not have time to finish the paper. The student therefore asks for a 24-hr extension of the deadline. On the one hand, the teacher feels that the student is sincere and that a small extension of the deadline would be in the best interest of her education. On the other hand, the teacher worries that granting an extension will undermine the rules. After all, the deadline was clear to all students. If she grants an extension to one student, more students might start asking for similar favors. In our example, the teacher is faced by a moral dilemma, an issue in which she has to decide what is fair and choose between at least two options that have different consequences for some other person (Velasquez & Rostankowski, 1985). These moral dilemmas are quite common whenever people have to apply rules and regulations. Although most rules are usually quite clear, we often encounter some special cases that seem to fall out of the expected scope of these rules. We are then faced with the moral dilemma of whether to apply the rule (and stick to the deadline) or not (and grant an extension). In such cases, we are confronted by the fact that there are two opposite types of moral thinking to resolve the dilemma (Anscombe, 1958; Beauchamp, 2001). On the one hand there is rule-based (deontological) moral thinking, in

which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged on the basis of the degree to which the act complies with existing principles, laws, norms, and rules. If John steals my bike, it is immoral because it violates the principle that one should not steal (Kant, 1785/1997). In rule-based moral thinking an act is inherently right or wrong, irrespective of specifics of the circumstances. On the other hand, there is outcome-based (consequentialist) moral thinking, in which the rightness of an act is not determined by the degree to which it fits with principles, but by looking at the consequences of that act. If John steals my bike, it is wrong because it would make me unhappy, but it might also be right if it allows John to reach some higher goal, such as racing to the doctor to save the life of his sick mother (Anscombe, 1958; Beauchamp, 2001).1 Because of such opposing moral principles, moral reasoning can be quite complex. We like to think that, in resolving such dilemmas, we are not affected by seemingly trivial external influences. We like to think that, for example, our current social situation does not affect our moral reasoning. Older models of moral thinking reflected this view on moral decision making (e.g., Kohlberg, 1969; Piaget, 1932/1965, Turiel, 1983). In these models, moral judgment was thought to be the product of a solid and thorough process of internal moral reasoning and reflection. More recently, however, this claim has been questioned, and it has been shown
1 Although in philosophical literature, the terms deontological and consequentialist (or teleological) moral thinking are used more frequently, we use the more comprehensible terms of rule-based versus outcome-based moral thinking. Utilitarianism should be seen as an extreme form of outcome-based thinking. Here it is held that an action is right if it yields the greatest happiness to all individual actors, independent of whether or not they start that action (Bentham, 1789; Mill, 1861/1991). From such a utilitarian perspective, it would be right to steal my bike if the thief would get more pleasure from it than I would. As most people do not spontaneously adopt such a utilitarian perspective, we only focus on more moderate forms of outcome-based moral thinking.

Joris Lammers and Diederik A. Stapel, Tilburg Institute of Behavioral Economics Research (TIBER) and Department of Social Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joris Lammers, Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB, Tilburg, the Netherlands. E-mail: j.lammers@uvt.nl 279

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that moral thinking is often strongly based on intuition (Haidt, 2001; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2006; Wheatley & Haidt, 2005). People do not reach a moral judgment as a result of private moral reasoning. Instead, they rely on some gut feeling that quickly and automatically determines their moral decision and that is often influenced by contextual cues, such as social or cultural circumstances.

The Effect of Power

In the current article, we want to cast light on the consequences of one such social-cultural circumstance, namely power. In fact, power may very well be the most important form of social influence (Russell, 1938). Following Galinsky and colleagues, we define power as the ability to control resources, own and others (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003; Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). This definition distinguishes power from the related concept of status, which refers to a persons standing in a social hierarchy (Anderson, John, Keltner, & Kring, 2001). Although power and status in practice often go hand in hand, the two are conceptually different (Weber, 1915/ 1947). We aim to show that the subjective feeling of power, which may be based on both the actual possession of power and on mere thoughts about the possession of power, influences the way and style in which people think about and judge moral problems. Specifically, we expect that high and low power are, respectively, linked to rule-based and outcome-based moral thinking. That is, we expect that high-power individuals are more inclined to think in rule-based moral terms, whereas low-power individuals rely more on outcome-based moral considerations. It is important to note that we study the effect of power on the style of moral thinking, not on morality itself. That is, we do not want to show that power makes people more or less evil. Although it is certainly true that some forms of power have corruptive and undermining effects on morality (Kipnis, 1972, 1976), recently, it has been argued that the effects of power are not simply positive or negative. A better view on power is that it has general transformative effects on the individual, that can be both negative (corruptive) and positive (commendable) for the individual, depending on the person, situation, and context (e.g., Chen, LeeChai, & Bargh, 2001; Galinsky et al., 2003; Keltner et al., 2003; Lammers & Galinsky, 2009; Lammers, Galinsky, Gordijn, & Otten, 2008; Lammers & Stapel, 2009). In the current article, we want to continue this line of thinking. We do not aim to show that power makes people less or more moral but, rather, that it affects their style of moral thinking. High-power individuals are more inclined to think in rule-based moral terms, whereas low-power individuals rely more on outcome-based moral considerations. Our prediction on this effect of power is based on the idea that stability is appealing for high-power people, because their highpower position allows them control of resources, own and others (Emerson, 1962; Fiske, 1993; Galinsky et al., 2003; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). As a result, we expect that high-power people will be drawn and attracted to moral principles that stabilize the power hierarchy. Rules are inherently more stabilizing. If one relies on outcome-based principles, then moral decisions will strongly depend on the specific characteristics of the situation. But rules and principles always yield the same moral response, independent of

the place or situation (Kelman, 1969, 2001). If it is wrong to steal because the rule says so, then it will be wrong today and it will be wrong tomorrow, whether it rains or whether it snows. Also, in more social terms, the generating of norms, values, ideologies, and other abstract rule-based principles can be seen as the primary means by which power relations are stabilized (Foucault & Gordon, 1980; Sidanius & Pratto, 1993; Sidanius, Pratto, van Laar, & Levin, 2004; Sidanius, van Laar, Levin, & Sinclair, 2003). A set of system rules, norms, and values allows the powerful to secure compliance with the system among the powerless and, thus, defends the status quo (Gramsci, 1971; Habermas, 1975). Hence, because it is to the benefit of the powerful to maintain the status quo, and because rule-based moral thinking stabilizes the status quo, high-power people should be strongly inclined to rule-based morality.2 The powerless are likely to have an opposite motivation. Whereas the powerful are oriented at defending the status quo and tend to focus on the principles that support the system, the powerless are instead oriented at detecting possible negative effects of that power relationship. As a consequence, they adopt an outcomebased moral system, because by focusing on the unfairness of the outcome of the power relation, the powerless can quickly detect any negative effects it may have for them (Gramsci, 1971; Habermas, 1975; Tyler & McGraw, 1986; Weber, 1922/1968). The unfairness of an unequal distribution can always be concealed and cloaked by abstract rule-based moral principles, such as the idea of meritocracy, but by focusing on the outcomes, any unfairness that may be there is immediately exposed and revealed (Sidanius, 1992). These opposing forces of rule-based and outcome-based thinking can be witnessed when social conflicts arise between a powerless group who desires social change and a powerful clique who aims to maintain the status quo. In such situations, the powerful point to the importance and validity of rules, laws, and principles and use this rule-based morality in an attempt to close off the route to change. The powerless, on the other hand, focus on the practical, material effects of a system and appeal for change by arguing that the outcomes of the system are immoral (Eisinger, 1973; McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 1998). For example, capitalism can be said to be legitimate and fair because the same rules of supply and demand apply to all, but it can be said to be unfair because it leads to large inequalities between haves and have-nots. The rich haves (i.e., the powerful) are inclined to this first, rule-based moral stance, whereas the poor have-nots (i.e., the powerless) take the opposite outcome-based position. We aim to show this effect, that high power leads to rule-based and low power to outcome-based moral thinking in more controlled settings. In showing this effect of power on moral reasoning, we add to existing research that has shown the impact of power on peoples modes of thinking. For example, power leads to more abstract (Smith & Trope, 2006), more flexible (Guinote, 2007a), less conventional (Galinsky, Magee, Gruenfeld, Whitson, & Liljenquist, 2008), and more goal-directed (Guinote, 2007b;
Note that outcome-based moral thinking can also take the shape of norms or principles, but these refer to the morality of the distribution, rather than of the process. The principle that no one should be paid less than the minimum wage, for example, is outcome-based moral thinking.
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Smith, Jostmann, Galinsky, & van Dijk, 2008) thinking. However, no research has yet studied the effect of power on moral thinking styles. Yet showing that power has an effect on moral thinking is important, because such an effect of power would suggest a structural threat to peoples impartiality, as it may turn out that the moral decisions people make are highly dependent on their location in existing power structure. The effect of power on moral thinking is especially important, because in practice, moral decisions are often made in relations of unequal power. Teachers (such as in our example) have to decide on a daily basis whether students are right or wrong and whether they pass or fail. Managers frequently have to make similar decisions concerning their employees. Judges decide on defendants guilt. If we find that high-power people think differently about moral issues and reach different decisions, then they may have to be made aware or even try to correct for this effect.

Overview
To summarize, we propose that power affects the way in which people think about moral dilemmas and that high-power participants rely more on rule-based morality because this serves their interests, whereas low-power participants rely more on outcomebased moral considerations. We test this prediction in a series of five experiments, which can roughly be divided in two parts. In the first three experiments, we focus only on moral thinking in an abstract setting. That is, participants play the role of neutral observer and are not party to the dilemma itself. This has the advantage that we can test the pure effect of power on moral thinking, undisturbed by personal implications and considerations. We manipulate power by priming the concept, leading participants to think about high or low power. We show that priming high power increases rule-based (decreases outcome-based) moral thinking, compared with priming low power. In the second part of our article, we generalize our findings to moral dilemmas in which the perceiver is not a neutral party but is personally involved in the dilemma. Specifically, in Experiment 4, participants play either a high- or a low-power position in a simulated company. Here, we aim to show that the effect of power on moral thinking can be generalized from settings in which participants are merely observers to settings in which they are actors. By asking participants to play high- or low-power roles in organizations, Experiment 4 also directly manipulates having power. We also show that this effect on moral decisions is mediated by an increased rule-based moral orientation. In Experiment 5, we show an important moderator, namely compatibility with self-interest. In this experiment, participants are either in an experimental condition in which rule-based thinking does not run against their own interest or one in which it does. We expect that if rule-based morality is incompatible with participants selfinterest, then high-power participants will, instead, be more focused on their self-interest and will hence make an outcome-based moral decision.

power (see Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Anderson, John, & Keltner, 2005) on their moral preference, which we measured with one item that pitted a rule-based moral principle (treating everyone the same) against an outcome-based moral principle (sometimes making exceptions). We found that power strongly decreased outcome-based thinking (increased rule-based thinking) B 0.69, SE .25, p .006. A second pilot study (N 35) replicated this, but now by priming participants with the experience of high or low power (Galinsky et al., 2003) and by measuring the importance of a rule-based moral principle (I usually find it important to uphold laws) and an outcome-based moral principle (I usually find it important to be able to make exceptions to rules, if that is necessary) with two separate items, both on 9-point scales. We found an interaction effect, F(1, 31) 4.61, p .04, 2 .13, showing p that high power marginally increased the importance attached to the first, rule-based moral principles ( p .08) but marginally decreased the importance attached to outcome-based morality ( p .09).

Experiment 1
Compared with our pilot studies, where we found that power affected intuitive preference for rule-based over outcome-based moral thinking, we now wanted to test the effect of power on actual decisions in moral dilemmas. A problem with using such dilemmas, however, is that it is less clear whether effects are actually due to differences in moral thinking styles. They might also be due to the direct influence of power on participants preferences for a certain outcome. To address this issue, we controlled for the influence of the decision by orthogonally manipulating power and the actual decision. Stated differently, we presented participants with a moral dilemma in which they had to either reject or accept an invitation and asked them what they thought was the best moral consideration, given the decision to reject (or to accept, in the other conditions). We expected that, independent of the actual decision, high power would increase the preference for rule-based versus outcome-based considerations, compared with low power.

Method Participants and Design

Participants were 69 university students who took part in the experiment in partial fulfillment of a course requirement. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the conditions of a 2 (Power: high vs. low) 2 (Decision: reject vs. accept) betweenparticipants design.

Procedure
We first presented participants with an interpersonal dilemma, adapted from Donenberg and Hoffman (1988). In this dilemma, participants are presented with a high-school girl, who makes a certain moral decision. Participants are presented with that decision and are asked to decide whether a rule-based or an outcomebased argument is better. Specifically, they read this dilemma: A high school girl called Carol has promised to help her girlfriend Corinne with a personal problem, when she is asked by Tina, a

Pilot Studies
Before we conducted our main experiments, we first tested the general idea in two pilot studies. In a first correlation study (N 179), we computed the effect of participants chronic feelings of personal

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new girl in her class, to go to the theater with her, at that same time. Carol then has to decide between being loyal to her old friend and being nice to a new girl. Power manipulation. After reading the dilemma, but before making a decision, participants first completed a seemingly unrelated word-search puzzle. Participants were instructed to encircle eight words, laid out vertically or horizontally in a grid of 132 letters. Half of these words were fillers, and half were related to either high power (control, influence, power, and authority) or low power (subordinate, powerless, dependent, and submissive), depending on experimental condition (see Chen et al., 2001). Decision manipulation and measures. After completing the power prime, the participants returned to the moral dilemma. In one condition, participants read that Carol had decided to reject Tinas offer and kept her promise to Corinne. In the other condition, they read the opposite: Carol rescheduled her appointment with Corinne to visit the theater with Tina. It is important to note that this dilemma suits our design, because for both decisions that is, in both conditionsthere are both rule-based and outcomebased moral arguments that support that decision. Participants in the reject conditions were asked, Suppose you would advise Carol to reject Tinas offer to visit the theater and keep her promise to visit her friend Corinne, what would in that case be the best argument? Participants made their choice by encircling a number on a 9-point scale, anchored by an outcomebased (1 Corinne needs someone to help her with her problems) and a rule-based (9 A promise is a debt) moral argument. Participants in the accept conditions were asked, Suppose you would advise Carol to accept Tinas invitation to the theater and reschedule her appointment with Corinne, what would in that case be the best argument? Here, too, participants made their choice on a 9-point scale, anchored by an outcome-based (1 Tina needs new friends on her new school, because else she will feel lonely) and a rule-based (9 It is generally a good rule to welcome in and be friendly to new people) moral argument. Finally, participants were asked for their thoughts on the aim of the research.

caused by a preference for one outcome (e.g., to visit the theater with Tina) over the other. Finally, we showed this effect after an unobtrusive lexical power prime. Participants were merely exposed to power-related words, which influence their moral orientation. None of the participants guessed the true aim of the research. This suggests that this effect of power is at least partially automatic.

Experiment 2
In Experiment 1, we showed that power affects moral thinking, independent of the actual decisions that people make. A disadvantage of the design of this experiment, however, is that, in a way, it also threw away the baby with the bathwater. After all, although we showed that power affects moral thinking, and although this gives insight into how people arrive at certain moral decision, we are primarily interested in how power influences the actual decisions that people make. In our second experiment, we therefore used an experimental design that allows for showing an effect of power on moral decisions while at the same time ruling out that this is due to outcome preference. In this design, we again manipulated power and orthogonally manipulated whether rule-based versus outcomebased moral decisions have positive versus negative consequences for the person in the dilemma, respectively. Stated differently, half of the participants were in an experimental condition in which following rule-based morality meant something bad (punishing) and following outcome-based morality meant something good (not punishing) for the person in the dilemma. The other half of the participants were in a condition in which the opposite was the case; following rule-based morality meant a positive (rewarding) and following outcome-based morality a negative thing (not rewarding) for that person. We expected that, independent of what the consequences were for the target, high-power participants would always tend to make the rule-based moral decision, whereas lowpower participants would favor outcome-based moral thinking.

Results and Discussion

None of the participants guessed the true aim of the experiment. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) testing the effect of power and decision on participants moral decision showed the predicted significant main effect of power, F(1, 65) 4.91, p .03, 2 .07, and, as predicted, no main or interaction effect of the p decision (Fs 1). Independent of decision type, participants in the high-power conditions had a stronger preference for the rule-based moral considerations (M 5.16, SD 2.49), compared with participants in the low-power conditions, who had a stronger preference for the outcome-based moral considerations (M 3.34, SD 2.36). These results again support the hypothesis that high power leads to a stronger preference for rule-based moral considerations, whereas low power leads to a stronger preference for outcomebased moral considerations. Compared with the pilot study, these results show the effect of moral thinking on an actual moral dilemma, rather than on abstract descriptions of moral principles. It is important to note that we found this effect while randomly allocating participants to one of two moral decisions. That is, we showed that power affects moral thinking and that this is not

Method Participants and Design

Participants were 68 university students who took part in the experiment in partial fulfillment of a course requirement. Participants were randomly assigned to one condition of a 2 (Power: high vs. low) 2 (Dilemma Type: punish vs. reward) betweenparticipants design.

Procedure
Participants first completed an experiential power prime (Galinsky et al., 2003). Participants were asked to recall an episode of high or low power (depending on condition) and to describe on an blank sheet of paper what happened and how this made them feel. Next, participants read one of two moral dilemmas. In the punish frame condition, participants read the following:
A teacher maintains the following rule: If a child in class behaves badly the teacher punishes him or her. Heinz is one of the children. Heinz did not behave well today and has been fighting with other kids. The rule dictates therefore that he needs to be punished. The teacher,

POWER AND MORAL THINKING however, suspects that Heinz has been provoked by other kids. So, the teacher thinks about not punishing Heinz. On the other hand, not punishing Heinz may undermine the rules and create disorder. What should the teacher do? (1 make an exception [i.e., do not punish], 9 follow the rules [i.e., punish]).

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In the reward frame condition, participants read the following:

A teacher maintains the following rule: If a child in class behaves well, the teacher rewards him or her. Heinz has done his homework and therefore, following the rules, he needs to be rewarded. The teacher, however, suspects that Heinz has cheated in doing his homework and therefore does not deserve a reward. Yet, the teacher is not sure and worries that breaking the rule might lead to disorder. What should the teacher do? (1 make an exception [i.e., do not reward], 9 follow the rules [i.e., reward]).

We framed the two dilemmas such that in one condition, a rule-based moral decision (following the rules) means a negative thing for Heinz (punishing) and an outcome-based moral decision (making an exception) means a positive thing (not-punishing) for Heinz, whereas in the other condition, the rule-based and the outcome-based decisions have opposite implications (i.e., positive rewarding, and negative not-rewarding). That is, these two conditions orthogonally manipulate morality (rule- vs. outcome-based) and valence of the decision (positive vs. negative for the target).

past studies tested the effect in relatively moderate moral dilemmas. Why high-school girl Carol visits which one of her two girlfriends (Experiment 1), or whether Heinz gets punished or rewarded (Experiment 2) is relatively inconsequential. In Experiment 3, we wanted to test the same effect of power in more extreme moral dilemmas, where the actual decision concerns matters of life and death. In Experiment 3a, we used a medical dilemma, in which the actual decision has a great impact on a patients quality of life. In Experiment 3b, we focused on a dilemma about the permissibility of illegal interrogation techniques. Moreover, we present these two experiments together, because, like in Experiment 2, in one dilemma, a rule-based decision means something positive, whereas in the other, it means something negative for the target. That is, these two experiments together show that this effect is not driven by the valence of the decision.

Method Participants and Design

Participants were 31 (Experiment 3a) and 24 (Experiment 3b) university students who took part in the experiment in partial fulfillment of a course requirement. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (low power, high power).

Results and Discussion

None of the participants accurately guessed the relation between the priming task and the later moral dilemma task. One participant was dropped because she did not fill out the power prime, although this made no difference to the effects. A 2 (Power) 2 (Dilemma Type) ANOVA on participants moral decision yielded a main effect of power, showing that participants in the high-power conditions were more inclined to follow rule-based moral consideration (M 7.65, SD 1.32) than were participants in the low-power conditions (M 6.48, SD 2.11), F(1, 63) 7.36, p .009, 2 .11. As predicted, this significant main effect was p not moderated by the dilemma type (F .09, p .77). We also found a less interesting main effect of dilemma frame, F(1, 63) 18.61, p .001, 2 .24, showing that participants were more p inclined to follow the rules if that meant rewarding Heinz (M 7.97, SD 1.49) than if it meant punishing him (M 6.21, SD 1.74). These results replicate the finding that high power encourages rule-based moral thinking, whereas low power triggers outcomebased moral thinking. This effect is not caused by an influence of power on outcome preference but, rather, is caused directly by an effect on the two styles of moral thinking. After all, in both types of dilemmas, high-power participants were more likely to adopt rule-based and less likely to adopt outcome-based moral considerations, independent of the consequences for the person affected by that decision.

Procedure
The experiment was conducted in individual cubicles, using paper and pencil. All participants first completed the same experiential power prime manipulation (Galinsky et al., 2003) that we used in Experiment 2. Next, they read one of two moral dilemmas that both pitted a rule-based and an outcome-based moral consideration against each other. Dilemma Experiment 3a. In one moral dilemma, it was described how Lawrence, a medical doctor, diagnoses a young man with an incurable disease:
Although the man will not notice any problem or suffer any inconveniences from the disease, it is sure that he will die within 6 to 9 months. No cure is possible and nothing can be done to help the man. Accidentally, the girlfriend of the young man hears the diagnosis before her boyfriend. She begs doctor Lawrence to wait with informing her friend. She explains that her friend always wanted to visit Africa and that they recently booked a trip together. Given that the man will die anyway, that no cure exists and that he will not suffer from it, the girlfriend insists that her boyfriend is better off if the doctor informs him after the holiday. The rules and regulations of the hospital however require doctors to inform patients as soon as possible. What should doctor Lawrence do?

Experiments 3a and 3b
Having established the effect of power on moral thinking style with two experimental designs that maximize reliability, we then decided to focus more on testing the robustness of the effect. The

Participants then indicated what they thought doctor Lawrence should do, on a 9-point scale, anchored between 1 (wait until after the holiday; outcome-based) and 9 (inform the patient directly; rule-based). Waiting until after the holiday is better from an outcome-based perspective, as this could make the patient happy in his last days. Telling the patient right away is better from a rule-based perspective, as this complies with the rules and regulations of the hospital. Finally, participants were thanked for participation.

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Dilemma Experiment 3b. A second moral dilemma was based on a true story that happened in Germany in 2002. In that year, the 11-year-old son of a banker was kidnapped on his way home from school. Three days later, the police arrested a suspect after he had picked up the ransom money. The suspect did confess to be the kidnapper, said he knew where the boy was, but refused to disclose his whereabouts. His lack of cooperation made the police chief fear that the boy was locked up somewhere without food or water and would die if not found quickly. The chief therefore decided to threaten the suspect with physical torture. The subject then quickly yielded and took the police to the boy, who, as it turned out, was already dead. The case sparked a debate in Germany about what is permissible in the interrogation of suspects. We chose this dilemma because, from a rule-based perspective, the action of the police chief was wrong. After all, it breaks the principle of the inviolability of the human body and the ban on torture, a fundamental aspect of our legal system. From an outcome-based perspective, however, it was the right thing to do if it could have prevented something much worse. Participants read the described moral dilemma and were asked to judge the permissibility of three interrogation techniques in the above situation. Specifically, participants rated the permissibility of psychological pressure, the withholding of food and sleep, and physical violence (not leading to permanent damage). All three techniques were rated on a 9-point scale (1 unacceptable, 9 acceptable).

unkind behavior, as they thought various interrogation techniques to be more admissible. This shows that high (or low) power does not influence moral thinking because it affects the outcome that people prefer (whether they want to be nice or cruel to the target). Rather, independent of the consequences of the choices made, high power does lead to more rule-based and low power to more outcome-based moral thinking.

Experiment 4
Across three experiments, we have found robust evidence that power affects peoples intuitive preference for rule-based versus outcome-based moral decisions. In each of these studies, we focused on showing the effect of power on moral thinking in a relatively abstract manner. Participants were merely neutral observers and were not personally involved in the dilemmas. Furthermore, our manipulation of power was unrelated to the dilemma and consisted of mere primes of the experience (Experiments 2 and 3) or the concept (Experiment 1) of power. Although this allowed us to demonstrate the pure and clean effect of power on moral thinking, in the next experiment, we wanted to depart from this approach and increase ecological validity in three ways. First, we wanted to manipulate power itself in a more realistic manner. In the previous experiments, we relied on priming power. A lingering concern is therefore that these results may differ from how people would behave if they were in a real position of high or low power, in which they actually control and influence others (Galinsky et al., 2003; Lammers, Stoker, & Stapel, 2009). Consequently, in Experiment 4 we aimed to manipulate power by allocating participants to high- or low-power roles (following Anderson & Berdahl, 2002). Second, and related, in the past studies, we used vignettes to present participants with moral dilemmas. Participants read about hypothetical cases and gave their opinion about what is right. In Experiment 4, we wanted to go beyond these vignettes and show an effect of power on a real decision. That is, in Experiment 4 participants have real power in a real interaction with other people and make a real decision with real implications for the participants environment. The participant does not merely decide on an abstract moral dilemma but is a protagonist in the moral dilemma him- or herself. This allows us to generalize our findings to moral dilemmas in which the perceiver is not a neutral party but is personally involved in the dilemma. Third, we wanted to show in this experiment that power affects moral decisions because it affects moral thinking. That is, we aimed to show that the effect of power on the moral decision (rule-based versus outcome-based) is mediated by participants moral orientation. This combines the findings of our pilot study and the previous experiments by showing that power affects peoples intuitive preference for rule-based versus outcome-based
In Experiment 4a, we also ran a control condition, in which participants were not primed with an experience of high or low power but, instead, were asked to recall and write about their last night out. Control participants (M 5.36, SD 2.06) were less rule-oriented than were high-power participants, t(42) 1.58, p .12, and were more rule-oriented than low-power participants, t(42) 1.76, p .09. This suggests the effect of power on moral thinking is caused by equally strong and opposite effects of low and high power.
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Results and Discussion

We analyzed Experiments 3a and 3b separately. A one-way ANOVA testing the effect of power on participants moral decision in the medical dilemma (Experiment 3a) showed a significant effect of power, F(1, 29) 10.86, p .003, 2 .27, showing p that participants in the high-power condition were more rule oriented (M 6.65, SD 2.34) and, hence, more likely to directly tell the patient about his illness than were participants in the low-power condition (M 3.86, SD 2.35), who were more likely to agree with the girlfriend and wait with telling the patient.3 A 2 (Between: power) 3 (Within: acceptability of three techniques) ANOVA on the dilemma about the permissibility of torture (Experiment 3b) revealed the expected main effect of power, F(1, 22) 5.42, p .03, 2 .20, showing that particp ipants in the high-power condition deemed the various techniques less permissible (M 6.31, SD 1.07) than did participants in the low-power condition (M 7.33, SD 1.09). Stated otherwise, participants in the high-power condition were more inclined to use a rule-based moral decision and stick to the rules, whereas participants in the low-power condition were more inclined to make an outcome-based moral decision and allow illegal interrogation techniques. Experiments 3a and 3b show that the effect of power on moral thinking is robust and that it can also be found in dilemmas in which the decision is not trivial at all but concerns matters of life and death. Moreover, Experiments 3a and 3b also combine well to demonstrate in a different way the point that we demonstrated in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3a, low-power participants were kinder to the patient than were high-power participants. After all, they risked breaking the rules to increase the patients quality of life. In Experiment 3b, however, low-power participants showed

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moral considerations (pilot studies) and, as a consequence, leads them to make a corresponding choice on a moral dilemma (Experiments 13). Finally, we wanted to exclude some alternative explanations. Because role manipulations might affect mood (high-power participants might feel more proud and happy), we wanted to measure mood and check its effect. Second, we also wanted to control for the effect of perspective taking. Previous research suggests that high power is associated with decreased perspective taking (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006). It might, however, be that perspective taking leads to more outcome-based morality, because the latter requires one to focus on the implications for another person. We therefore measure perspective taking to control for it. Last, we wanted to rule out that the effect may occur because sticking to the rules is perhaps cognitively easier, and perhaps high-power peoplewho are said to be more cognitively lazy (Fiske, 1993; Weick & Guinote, 2008)may choose the more cognitively easy option. Although we did not have any prediction why this could explain the effects, we also wanted to make sure that power did not affect the perceived difficulty of making a rule-based or an outcome-based moral decision.

Method Participants and Design

Participants were 50 university students who took part in the experiment in return for 4 ($5.44). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (low power, high power).

Procedure
Participants entered the lab and were seated in individual cubicles, behind personal computers that administered the entire experiment. They were instructed that in this experiment, they would be part of a company, together with other students. It was told that together the employees of this company would make so-called Tanagrams, a series of puzzle-like tasks. Furthermore, they were told that one of the participants would be manager (the high-power role), whereas the other participants would be employees (low power). Consistent with Anderson and Berdahl (2002; see also Galinsky et al., 2003), it was explained that the manager would have complete control over the employees and the work process and would, at the end, direct and evaluate the employees. Manipulation. Also consistent with Anderson and Berdahl (2002), participants then read that they would complete a leadership aptitude test that would determine which of the participants would be manager. Hence, participants completed an 18-item leadership questionnaire. In reality, half of the participants were randomly assigned the leader position, and the other half were assigned employees. The high-power participants were told that they would direct and lead the low-power employees; the lowpower participants were told that they would be led and controlled by the high-power leader. Measures. After hearing their power position, participants received an incoming e-mail-like message in which they were told that before participants could actually start to work on the Tanagram tasks, it had to be decided how the companys employees would be rewarded. Participants were presented with two reward

systems, of which one was outcome-based and another rule-based, and were asked to indicate which of the two criteria they thought was the fairest. In the outcome-based criterion, employees were rewarded according to the final quality of their Tanagram (the outcome of their work), whereas in the rule-based criterion, they were rewarded according to the degree to which they had followed the rules of the company. Although it was suggested that only the high-power participant would make the actual choice, all participants were asked for their opinion. Participants made their choice on a 9-point scale, indicating whether the first (1) or the second criterion (9) was the fairest. After an unrelated filler task (taking about 5 min), we then measured participants moral orientation using twelve 9-point (1 fully disagree, 9 fully agree) items. Specifically, six items measured a rule-based moral orientation, (e.g., Generally, I find it important that everyone is treated according to the rules) and six items measured an outcome-based moral orientation, (e.g., I think that one should always be able to make exceptions to the rules). The 12 items (outcome-based items recoded) were combined in a 12-item moral-orientation scale ( .86; high rule-based, low outcome-based; e.g., I think it is important that the rules are followed strictly, I believe that everyone should be treated according to the same rules, and I think rules should be secondary to people; reverse coded). Next, we administered a series of control measures, all on 9-point scales (1 fully disagree, 9 fully agree). Specifically, we first administered a six-item manipulation check ( .89; e.g., In my position I am controlling other people, In my position I am influencing others). Next, we administered a six-item mood scale ( .91; e.g., At the moment I feel happy), and a six-item perspective taking scale ( .84; e.g., At the moment, I think about what other employees in this experiment might be thinking). Finally, we checked how hard or difficult participants thought it might be to make a rule-based versus an outcome-based moral decision, by asking participants two questions: If an employee would violate a rule but this would lead to a better outcome, then punishing him/her would be 1 (very easy) to 9 (very hard), and then rewarding him would be 1 (very easy) to 9 (very hard). Finally, we checked participants for suspicion and debriefed them.

Results
A one-way ANOVA on the effect of power (experimental condition) on the manipulation check of power showed that participants in the high-power condition felt more powerful, in the sense that they believed they had real influence and could exercise actual control over other participants (M 6.97, SD 1.26) than did low-power participants, who felt they were controlled by others (M 3.83, SD 1.23), F(1, 48) 79.72, p .001, 2 .62. p A similar one-way ANOVA showed that high-power participants were more inclined to vote for a rule-based reward criterion (M 6.38, SD 2.62), compared with low-power participants, who voted for an outcome-based criterion (M 4.35, SD 2.17), F(1, 48) 8.59, p .004, 2 .16. Neither the covariate p perspective taking, F(1, 45) 0.73, p .40, nor affect, F(1, 49) 0.01, p .97, had any effect on the dependent variable.

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A similar one-way ANOVA showed that high-power participants also had a more rule-based moral orientation (M 5.76, SD 1.41), compared with low-power people (M 4.88, SD 0.74), F(1, 48) 7.98, p .007, 2 .14. Again, neither p perspective taking, F(1, 45) 0.10, p .75, nor affect, F(1, 45) 0.27, p .61, had any effect on the dependent variable and did not affect the predictive power of the manipulation. We then checked whether the former effect, that high-power participants were more inclined to think the rule-based versus outcome-based criterion was fairer, was mediated by high-power participants moral thinking style. As can be seen in Figure 1, we found that moral orientation fully mediated the direct effect of power on participants preference for a rule-based moral criterion, decreasing the direct effect from B 2.03, SE .68, .40, p .004, to a nonsignificant B 1.07, SE .64, .21, ns. The obtained indirect effect B .96, SE .41, is significant in a normal theory test for indirect effects, Sobels Z 2.33, p .02. Next, we wanted to rule out that any effect that occurred because perhaps making a rule-based decision was cognitively easier than making an outcome-based decision. A paired t test, however, showed that a rule-based decision was, in fact, seen as marginally more difficult, t(49) 1.74, p .09, than an outcome-based decision. Power did not affect the perceived difficulty of making either rule-based, F(1, 48) 0.01, p .92, or outcome-based decisions, F(1, 48) 0.61, p .44.

participant had influence over them, and a realistic moral decision, which participants believed had actual consequences for the procedure and outcomes of the experiment. That is, the participant was him- or herself either a powerful or a powerless protagonist in the moral dilemma. This not only adds strongly to the ecological validity of our findings but also allows us to generalize our findings to moral dilemmas in which the perceiver is personally involved in the dilemma, rather than being a neutral party.

Experiment 5
In Experiment 5, we further extend the results of the previous experiments by introducing the moderating role of self-relevance. We aim to show that although power increases rule-based moral thinking, this is not the case when rule-based thinking is not to the advantage of the powerful. This occurs when the powerful is a protagonist in the experiment her- or himself (like in Experiment 4) but also pursues goals that clash with those rules. In such a conflicting situation, we expect that the powerfulin following their own interestswill break their rule-based moral orientation (cf. Keltner et al., 2003; see also Galinsky et al., 2003; Guinote, 2007b; Smith & Bargh, 2008). We therefore used a similar design as in the first three experiments and first administered a power priming task, followed by a moral dilemma. It is important to note, however, for half of the participants, the dilemma was framed in the third person (as in previous experiments). That is, the dilemma was about a hypothetical person and had no personal implications for the participant. For the other half, however, it was framed in the second person. The dilemma was about the participant him- or herself (What would you do?), and participants answer hence had personal implications. We expected that, in the former case, we would replicate the effects of previous experiments, whereas in the latter, we would not. In Experiment 5, we again administered measures of mood and perspective taking, as in the previous experiment. Although previous research has shown that priming power using an experiential priming task does not affect mood (Galinsky et al., 2003, Experiment 3), we rechecked this for additional methodological safety.

Discussion
The current experiment added to the previous four experiments in several ways. First, our mediation analysis shows that highpower leads people to make more rule-based moral decisions, because high-power people have an increased rule-based moral orientation. Moral orientation acted as a strongly significant mediator, and after addition of the mediator, the direct effect of the independent variable was no longer significant, which indicates complete mediation (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Thus, we conclude that the effect of power on the actual rule-based decision can be explained very well by high-power participants increased rulebased moral orientation. Second, this conclusion is strengthened by the fact that we ruled out any effect of mood, perspective taking, or participants perception of the difficulty of making a rule-based or outcome-based decision. Third, we used a realistic manipulation of power, which made participants believe that they had actual influence over other participants or believe that another

Method Participants and Design

Participants were 60 university students who took part in the experiment in partial fulfillment of a course requirement. Participants were randomly assigned to one condition of a 2 (Power: high vs. low) 2 (Frame: third person, personal) between-participants design.

rule-based moral orientation .38 .50

Procedure
power .40 (.21) rule-based decision

Figure 1. Standardized regression coefficients for the relationship between power (manipulated) and voting for rule-based (as opposed to outcome-based) reward criterion, mediated by moral orientation. (The standardized regression coefficient for the relationship between power and support for a rule-based reward criterion, controlling for moral orientation, is in parentheses.) p .01. p .001.

Participants first completed the same experiential power prime that we used before. Next, participants read a moral dilemma that was either framed in the abstract third person or in the personal second person:
Suppose someone is (you are) now looking for a new apartment after his (your) landlord has terminated the tenancy. Yet, the only affordable option is public housing, for which there is a three year waiting

POWER AND MORAL THINKING list. There is however a trick that allows one (you) to bypass the waiting list and immediately obtain a house.

287

We expected that among participants who read the dilemma in the third person, without personal considerations, we would find the same effect as in the previous experiments. High-power participants would find using this trick less acceptable than would low-power participants, as it violates rule-based morality and breaks a rule. Among the other half of the participants, who read the text in the personal second person, however, we expected this effect not to occur, because here, sticking to the rules runs counter to the interests of the powerful. After having read the dilemma, participants answered whether using this trick was acceptable, on a 9-point scale, between 1 (definitely not) and 9 (definitely yes). Next, participants completed an identical six-item manipulation check of power ( .87) and an identical six-item measure of mood ( .89) as used in the previous experiment. Finally, we administered a four-item measure of perspective taking, asking how easy or hard participants thought it was to take the perspective of the protagonist ( .89), to rule out that any effect of power was caused by differences in perspective taking.

renter (M 6.54, SD 1.34), F(1, 56) 5.13, p .03. More important, however, adding mood or perspective taking as predictors to the model showed neither an effect of mood, F(1, 55) .84, p .36, nor of perspective taking, F(1, 55) 1.36, p .25.

General Discussion
Across different experiments, we have shown that feelings of subjective power influence peoples intuitive preference for ruleversus outcome-based moral thinking styles and moral judgments. In a set of pilot studies, we found initial evidence that high power increases the importance that participants attach to rule-based moral arguments and decreases the importance they attach to outcome-based moral arguments. We then conducted three experiments to test whether this translates into decisions in moral dilemmas, using three different ways to exclude the possibility that they were caused by high-power people being crueler or kinder to the targets in the dilemma. In these three experiments, participants were not themselves party to the dilemma; they played the role of neutral observers. In the next two experiments, we changed that. In Experiment 4, we used a realistic power manipulation, in which the participants power was related to the dilemma, and the participant was personally involved. We again found that high power causes more rule-based/less outcome-based moral decisions and showed that this was explained by a more rule-based/less outcomebased moral orientation. Finally, in Experiment 5, we showed the moderating effect of personal relevance. When a rule-based moral decision goes against the interest of the participant, high power no longer leads to rule-based moral decisions. These last two studies also showed that mood and perspective taking do not affect our results. Our research thus shows that power affects the style of moral thinking, and not morality itself (cf. Kipnis, 1972, 1976). Power has general transformative effects that can be benevolent as well as malevolent: It all depends on the context in which rule-based or outcome-based moral thinking occurs. Our research shows that what people think is right and wrong is not simply a function of the various aspects of the moral dilemma but also of peoples subjective feelings of power. Throughout these studies, we tapped into moral thought processes by asking participants what moral principles they thought were more and less important and by presenting them with moral dilemmas. Readers might wonder why we did not simply ask people how they arrived at their decisions and why they made the decisions they did. We note, however, that although people can report the products of their cognitionthat is, make a moral decisionthey cannot reliably report the mental operations they engage to arrive there (Haidt, 2001, 2007; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Uleman & Bargh, 1989). We therefore chose to reliably measure participants moral decisions and moral orientations and to derive from it those mental operations that underlie moral thinking. We explained our findings by noting that rule-based thinking is attractive to the powerful because stability is in their interest and is therefore cognitively appealing. This explanation is strengthened by Experiment 5, which showed that when rules go against their interest, this effect of power is broken. Yet there might also be other reasons for the here-identified powermorality link. Smith and Trope (2006) showed that power leads to more global processing and prevents distraction by details. This might also in-

Results and Discussion

A 2 (Power) 2 (Implication) ANOVA on the manipulation check of power showed the predicted main effect of power, F(1, 56) 55.41, p .001, p .49, and no other main or interaction effects (Fs 1.7, ps .20). Participants in the high-power conditions felt more powerful (M 7.06, SD 0.97) than participants in the low-power conditions (M 4.52, SD 1.64). A 2 (Power) 2 (Implication) ANOVA on participants moral decision first showed a noninteresting main effect of framing, F(1, 56) 114.38, p .001, p .67, meaning that participants were overall more inclined to find it acceptable to use the trick themselves (M 7.56, SD 1.88) but less acceptable for others to use it (M 3.07, SD 1.58). More interesting, we also found a significant interaction effect between power and framing, F(1, 56) 10.86, p .002, p .16. Simple comparisons showed that in the absence of personal implications, high-power participants were more inclined to rule-based moral thinking, as they approved less of the plan (M 2.50, SD 1.02) than did low-power participants (M 3.64, SD 1.86), t(56) 2.83, p .006. This replicates the findings of the previous experiments. However, in the presence of personal implications, this effect disappeared. In fact, high-power participants were marginally less inclined to rule-based moral thinking and approved marginally more of the plan (M 8.38, SD .81) than did low-power participants (M 6.75, SD 2.29), t(56) 1.86, p .07. That is, high power increases rule-based moral thinking, but only when this has no personal implications. If it does have personal implications, and keeping to the rule is detrimental to participants own interests, then the effect is blocked. We also checked for the effects of mood and perspective taking on our dependent measure. Like Galinsky et al. (2003), we found no effect of the experimental conditions on mood (Fs 1.5, ps .25) and found only an unsurprising effect on perspective taking, showing that participants found it easier to take their own perspective (M 7.32, SD 1.3) than the perspective of the unidentified

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crease rule-based thinking because, to make an outcome-based moral decision, one is required to focus on the specific details of the situation and ignore the bigger picture. A related explanation might be that if people represent a moral issue as more abstract, they will also perceive it as more stable (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Wigboldus, Semin, & Spears, 2000). It seems plausible that because stable problems need stable answers, this could also increase rule-based thinking. We will explore such alternative mediators in future research.

Limitations and Implications

Of course, the present work also has a number of limitations and shortcomings. First, in most experiments, we measured moral thinking as efficiently as possible, with only one item that pitted rule-based and outcome-based moral thinking against each other. Although often, as in our medical dilemma or in the interrogation scenario, the two go against each other, there might also be cases where the two are more in line. Power might affect those decisions differently. Our measure would not be able to tap this effectively. Second, we restricted ourselves to relatively limited examples of outcome-based thinking and did not study a more extreme form of outcome-based thinking: utilitarianism. It might be that power has a different effect on utilitarian thinking than it has on outcomebased thinking. Utilitarianism requires taking distance from the people involved (to sacrifice one person for the benefit of 10). Because power has been associated with increased interpersonal distance (Lee & Tiedens, 2001), decreased perspective taking (Galinsky et al., 2006), and decreased compassion (Van Kleef et al., 2008), it might be that power facilitates utilitarian thinking. A third and final shortcoming is that, except for Experiment 4, most of our studies manipulated the experience of power, rather than the actual possession of power over others. In future research, we aim to study whether our effect also holds in existing power differences, for example by studying power in organizations. Pending those results, we conclude that our research has three important implications. First, our results allow us to better understand conflicts about moral issues between parties with unequal power. In such settings, high-power parties may (because of the importance they lay on rule-based moral thinking) appear rigid and unbending to lowpower parties. At the same time, low-power parties may appear irresponsible and too much focused on immediate implications (rather than a more stable and responsible adherence to norms) in the eyes of the powerful. Furthermore, if rule-based and outcomebased moral principles lead to different decisions, a conflict between the low- and high-power party is likely to arise. Mediators can profit from this insight because it allows them to understand the root cause for such a conflict and helps them solve such conflicts. A compromise will probably be most acceptable to both parties if it combines both outcome- and rule-based elements. That is, it should be framed to both follow general principles, and have a positive outcome for the parties involved. Second, our results also suggest strategies for influencing others in negotiations. Specifically, they suggest that when low-power people want to get their way through influencing high-power people, they should not do so by asking for a special treatment or to make an exception. After all, this is inconsistent with the powerful way of moral thinking: rule-based moral thinking. It is

better to first explicitly acknowledge the importance of rules, principles and regulations, and then to try to fit ones request in existing rules. Third, one should realize that the above is only true when one is dealing with a high-power authority that has no personal stake in the outcomes. When such a request is relevant for and runs counter to the personal interests of the powerful party, then this effect is reversed, because then the powerful are likely to abandon their rule-based moral orientation and adopt a self-enhancing, more outcome-based thinking style. This suggests that in negotiations with a powerful person, one may focus on either personal or collective terms, depending on the decision that one prefers. When one desires a rule-based decision, it is better to frame the request by appealing to broader, collective terms. When one desires an outcome-based decision, however, it is better to frame ones request in terms that emphasize how the powerful themselves may benefit from such a decision. Future research may test these tentative predictions in more specialized contributions and more controlled experiments. In doing so, such research can build on the firm base that we provided in this article: High power increases rule-based moral thinking, and low power increases outcome-based moral thinking.

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Received February 8, 2008 Revision received January 22, 2009 Accepted January 26, 2009