Power motivates heightened sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women

Power motivates heightened sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women. Lijun Zheng, Jing Zhang, Yong Zheng. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12324

Abstract: Previous studies have demonstrated that power induces sexual overperception by activating mating motivation. This study examined the impact of power on sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women. We manipulated power by instructing participants to recall an incident in their lives where they possessed power over someone else (high power) or someone else possessed power over them (low power). We controlled for individual variations in sex drive, sexual sensation seeking, and sociosexual orientation. We asked participants to record their sexual attraction to images of the opposite sex in swimsuits. Our results showed that high‐power individuals, both men and women, recorded significantly greater sexual attraction to the images than did low‐power individuals, demonstrating that power heightens sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women. The findings highlight power's activation of the mating motivation and have implications for the effect of power on sexualized behaviors.