High Power Mindsets Reduce Gender Identification and Benevolent Sexism Among Women (But Not Men) ☆ Andrea C. Vial a, ⁎, Jaime L. Napier b a Department of Psychology, Yale University, United States b Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates abstract article info Article history: Received 22 April 2016 Revised 29 June 2016 Accepted 30 June 2016 Available online 03 July 2016 We examine how feelings of power affect gender identification and the endorsement of sexism. Participants wrote essays about a time when they felt powerful or powerless (Studies 1–3) or about an event unrelated to power (Studies 2–3). Then, they reported how much they identified with their gender group. When primed with high power, women reported lower levels of gender identification, as compared to those primed with low power (Studies 1–2) and to a control condition (Studies 2–3). In Study 3, we also found that women primed with high power endorsed benevolent (but not hostile) sexism less than women in both the low power and con- trol conditions. Power had no impact on men's gender identification or sexism. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Gender Power Gender identification Benevolent sexism Upon becoming the first female CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, Carly Fiorina flatly declared, “I hope we're at a point that everyone has figured out that there is no glass ceiling” (Markoff, 1999). Years later, when an interviewer asked her about that now (in)famous declaration, Fiorina explained, “Looking back on that … I was truly stunned and completely unprepared for the amount of attention that was paid to my gender… because I had so long ago stopped thinking about myself as a woman in business, and thought about myself as a businessperson who happened to be a woman” (Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., 2003). With women so highly underrepresented in powerful roles (Catalyst, 2014), it seems surprising that one of the very few women who managed to make it to the top could be so detached from the diffi- culties facing women as a group. However, research suggests that this is not an anecdotal case. That is, members of disadvantaged groups who experience individual mobility seem to dissociate themselves with their ingroup in various ways (e.g., Derks, Ellemers, van Laar & de Groot, 2011; Kulich, Lorenzi-Cioldi, & Iacoviello, 2015). Here, we test one potential explanation for this phenomenon, namely that the psy- chological experience of feeling powerful might lead members of histor- ically disadvantaged groups to dis-identify with their group. A large literature has demonstrated that the psychological experi- ence of holding (or lacking) power affects a plethora of outcomes (e.g., Galinsky, Rucker, & Magee, 2015). In an effort to integrate the myr- iad effects of power in a single model, Rucker, Galinsky, and DuBois (2012) highlighted how the effects of high (vs. low) power appear to correspond to shifts in a self (vs. other) focus. More specifically, power produces an agentic orientation, where attention is primarily directed toward the self, whereas powerlessness produces a more communal orientation, amplifying sensitivity to bonding with, and considering the concerns of, the group (Blader & Chen, 2012; Dubois, Rucker, & Galinsky, 2015; Rucker, Dubois, & Galinsky, 2011). Consistent with this increased communality, low power individuals exhibit more group-cohesion promoting behaviors than high power individuals—for instance, they tend to be better at perspective taking (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006) and experience greater emotional dis- tress and compassion in response to the distress of another (van Kleef et al., 2008). In contrast, feeling powerful leads to lower needs to belong and, as a result, reduced self-reports of loneliness (Waytz, Chou, Magee, & Galinsky, 2015). Moreover, high (vs. low) power primes lead to independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal (Caza, Tiedens, & Lee, 2011; see also Kraus, Chen, & Keltner, 2011) and increased social distance (Lammers, Galinsky, Gordijn, & Otten, 2012; Lee & Tiedens, 2001; Magee & Smith, 2013; Smith & Trope, 2006). Conceiving of power in terms of shifts in agentic versus communal orientations leads to a consequential prediction about how an experi- ence with power might affect individuals' connection to their ingroup, especially for members of disadvantaged groups. Specifically, if the psy- chological experience of holding power fosters a sense of self-reliance and independence (Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 68 (2017) 162–170 ☆ This work was supported in part by a graduate research grant awarded to the first author by Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. The authors gratefully acknowledge the members of the Yale Intergroup Relations Lab as well as the Yale Gender Lab for their insightful feedback. Special thanks to Adam Galinsky, Jack Dovidio, Tori Brescoll, and Marianne LaFrance for their helpful recommendations. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, United States. E-mail address: andrea.vial@yale.edu (A.C. Vial). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.06.012 0022-1031/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 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