How Power Perception Differs? The Relationship with Social Dominance Orientation, Nonverbal Behaviour, Cultural Patterns, and Cognitive Flexibility

This report was written by me as a result of our Readings and Research in Social Psychology class project during my psychology degree in MEF University. Please note that this study is not published in a scientific bulletin.

Power have been always a hard concept to examine without any gender effect because of human history heritage with full of gender discriminations. In this study we examined the relationship between power perception via nonverbal behaviours(NVB) gender regards of social dominance orientation(SDO), cultural patterns such as horizontal/vertical individualism/collectivism, and cognitive flexibility. The study included 61 females and 53 males and a pre-test before the main phase. Pre-test included power perception scale and main phase included power perception and nonverbal behaviour scale, SDO scale, vertical/horizontal collectivism/individualism scale, and only 20 of participants fill the cognitive flexibility scale. The results supported first hypothesis which was men with high SDO perceived nonverbal behaviours that shows high power less appropriate for women. Because of the cultural norms and history of Turkey, there were more horizontal collectivist females and more vertical…