Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 721–726

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Journal of Research in Personality

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Need for power and affective response to negative audience reaction to an

extemporaneous speech
Eugene M. Fodor *, David P. Wick
Department of Psychology, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699-5825, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An experiment explored the relationship between power motivation and what David McClelland [McC-
Available online 18 June 2009 lelland, D. C. (1976a). Sources of stress in the drive for power. In Serban, G. (Ed.), Psychopathology and
human adaptation (pp. 247–270). New York: Plenum Press] termed as power stress, namely, an event that
Keywords: both arouses and thwarts the power need in power-motivated persons. Need for power was assessed via
Power motivation the Picture Story Exercise [PSE; McClelland, D. C., Koestner, R., & Weinberger, J. (1989). How do self-
Speech anxiety attributed and implicit motives differ? Psychological Review, 96, 690–702] and analyzed by means of
Electromyography
the coding system developed by David Winter [Winter, D. G. (1973). The power motive. New York: Free
Stress
Public Speaking
Press; Smith, C. P. (Ed.). (1992). Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis. Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press]. The power-stress induction assumed the form of negative reac-
tion by an audience of two persons to an extemporaneous speech. Conceived in this way, the power-
stress manipulation represents a different operational definition of power stress than has characterized
previous studies. As such, the investigation is an attempt to enlarge McClelland’s concept to explain a
broader set of circumstances. In the control condition, audience reaction was supportive and favorable,
but not to an extreme. Half the research participants scored high on the PSE measure of power motiva-
tion, and half scored low. Half were women, and half were men. Persons high in power motivation dis-
played more negative affect to the negative audience reaction to their speech than did persons low in
power motivation, and higher than both high- and low-power persons in the control condition as indexed
by electromyographic readings from the brow supercilii (p < .05) and by Anxiety scores (p < .05) on the
Affect Balance Scale [Downey, G., & Feldman, S. J. (1996). Implications of rejection-sensitivity for intimate
relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1327–1343]. We viewed these findings as
corroborative of McClelland’s power-stress theory.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction poraneous speech, a discernibly different operational definition of

The present experiment was an effort to extend David McClel-
land’s concept of power stress (McClelland, 1976a, 1979, 1982).
McClelland conceived power stress as a social event that simulta-
neously both arouses and thwarts the power need, namely, the
need to influence and create impact on others, and also to com-
mand recognition or acclaim for these power-oriented behaviors.
To establish the construct validity of a hypothetical construct like
power stress, the ideal strategy requires that one show a relation-
ship between the measure of the construct and a variety of behav-
ioral manifestations that logically derive from the construct,
thereby expanding the construct’s explanatory range (Furlong,
Lovelace, & Lovelace, 2000). The manner in which we operationally
defined power stress was negative audience reaction to an extem-
* Corresponding author. Fax: +1 315 268 7118.
E-mail address: fodorem@clarkson.edu (E.M. Fodor).
power stress than those employed in the past. A visibly negative
audience reaction to the speech, we hypothesized, would consti-
tute a power stress for persons who scored high in power motiva-
tion. We predicted that the negative audience reaction would
produce negative affect in high-power individuals both at the cog-
nitive and physiological levels.
A power stress can occur in either of two ways (McClelland,
1979, 1982). The first is an internal control mechanism which bot-
tles up the anger, assertiveness, and physiological activation that
the power motive mobilizes – what McClelland termed activity
inhibition. The second consists of social circumstances that require
strong assertive action of a magnitude that exceeds the high-power
person’s capacity to deliver. For this latter form of power stress,
McClelland acknowledged that the evidence was scanty at the time
of his writings. In either case – internal restraint or a social event
that exceeds the person’s assertive capabilities – the high-power
person’s attempts at self-assertion are checked and denied
expression, theoretically giving rise to harmful physiological

0092-6566/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2009.06.007
722 E.M. Fodor, D.P. Wick / Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 721–726
consequences if experienced repeatedly or for sustained periods
(cf. Selye, 1973; Steele, 1973).
A principal dependent variable in the present experiment con-
sisted of electromyographic (EMG) recordings from the corrugator
supercilii (frown muscles). EMG measurements detect muscle
activity through non-invasive means. Prompted by the seminal
studies of Cacioppo and his colleagues (Cacioppo, 1982; Cacioppo
& Petty, 1981a, 1981b; Cacioppo, Petty, Losch, & Kim, 1986),
EMG recordings have become a popular procedure among social
psychophysiologists as a means for tracing people’s affective reac-
tions to social stimuli. Corrugator EMG activity yields information
as to how much negative affect an individual experiences when ex-
posed to various attitude objects (Bradley, 2000). Electrical im-
pulses come through the corrugator supercilii, and measurement
of these impulses indicates the degree of unpleasantness the indi-
vidual feels at a given time period. The contractions that these im-
pulses cause are commonly undetectable as frowns by the naked
eye.
Many studies have shown predicted correlations between EMG
recordings from the corrugator brow muscles and negative affect
(Allen, Horne, & Trinder, 1996; Cacioppo et al., 1986; Fiorito & Si-
mons, 1994; Fodor, Wick, & Hartsen, 2006; Larsen, Norris, & Caci-
oppo, 2003; McHugo, Lanzetta, Sullivan, Masters, & Englis, 1985;
Tassinary, Cacioppo, & Geen, 1989). Fiorito and Simons (1994),
for example, conducted an experiment in which participants heard
scripted, tape-recorded scenes that varied along a dimension from
positive to negative affective valence. The experimenter then asked
that they visualize these scenes as vividly as possible, as if they
were actually experiencing the event described. Positive scenes
produced an increase in zygomatic (smile) activity, whereas nega-
tive scenes gave rise to a more dominant corrugator (frown) pat-
tern. Conducting research in a similar vein, Bradley (2000) found
significant contractions of the corrugator brow muscle when per-
sons viewed pictures that were rated as unpleasant.
2. The McClelland model
The McClelland model (McClelland, 1976b, 1985; McClelland,
Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989) proposes that persons of varying
motive dispositions (i.e., need for achievement, need for affilia-
tion/intimacy, or need for power) differ in their responsivity to
the events they encounter. Learned cues (activity incentives) sig-
nal an opportunity to engage in an emotionally reinforcing activ-
ity specific to a given motive. Should there occur a cue that is
congruent with the individual’s capacity to experience and sus-
tain a certain affective state, the result may be what Woike
(1994) terms as a ‘‘kick,” that is, a surge in affect specifically asso-
ciated with a given motive. On encountering an opportunity to
deliver a speech that might possibly influence and impress an
audience, for instance, a high-power person might well anticipate
feelings of strength, vigor, and energy. Should the high-power
individual then experience a thwarting of the anticipated surge
in these feelings, that experience would constitute a power stress.
McClelland et al. (1989) conceive the power motive as based on
the incentive of having impact, a kind of conditioned emotion
that results in the hormonal release of norepinephrine which is
a physiological indicator of stress adaptation. They report evi-
dence that impactful experience indeed is associated with the re-
lease of norepinephrine in high-power persons vs. those scoring
low in power motivation. Research in the McClelland tradition re-
lies on what has come to be termed the Picture Story Exercise
(PSE; McClelland et al., 1989; Winter, 1999). The PSE requires
the participant to write stories in response to pictures that
trained scorers analyze by means of a precise and detailed coding
system. The PSE measures implicit motives, that is, motives not
easily accessible to conscious awareness but which nevertheless
affect feelings and behavior in important ways. McClelland et al.
chose the term ‘‘implicit” to describe these motives because the
persons writing PSE stories are not explicitly describing them-
selves as having the motive as are people who complete self-re-
port questionnaires.
3. Evidence for the power stress concept
What is most necessary to test the power-stress theory, McClel-
land (1979) suggested, are experiments that present ‘‘strong situa-
tional challenges” (p. 189) to the power need. Using Winter’s PSE
measure of power motivation (1973; Smith, 1992), Fodor (1984,
1985) conducted industrial simulation experiments with college
students. Situational challenges took the form of a hard-to-manage
work group (Fodor, 1984) and experimentally-induced conflict
among ‘‘managers” that the student participant, as ‘‘company pres-
ident,” was supervising and which was virtually impossible to re-
solve (Fodor, 1985). Both experiments corroborated McClelland’s
thesis that high-power persons evince higher sympathetic activa-
tion in the face of power stress than do persons low in the power
motive.
Fodor et al. (2006) obtained evidence that when told that they
were to imagine themselves as manager to the person being inter-
viewed, persons high in the power motive gave higher electromyo-
graphic readings from the corrugator brow (frown) muscles when
viewing an assertive candidate on video than did low-power per-
sons, and higher than both high- and low-power participants
who viewed a compliant candidate. Imagining oneself as having
to interact with an assertive subordinate likely constitutes a power
stress for high-power persons.
Working in the McClelland tradition, Wirth, Welsh, and Schul-
theiss (2006) reasoned that the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal
(HPA) axis responds to both physical and psychological stressors
by increasing corticosteroid release. They obtained evidence that
the experience of losing a competitive contest did indeed produce
enhanced salivary cortisol secretion in power-motivated partici-
pants but not in persons low in power motivation.
4. Power motivation and emotion
Closely integrated with McClelland’s concept of power stress is
research evidence linking power motivation with emotion. McClel-
land et al. (1989) theorized that individuals engage in behaviors
that impact the social environment in ways that link to their dom-
inant motives, be they need for achievement, need for affiliation/
intimacy, or need for power. High-power individuals, by this rea-
soning, should enact behaviors that create and maintain a feeling
of energy and personal excitement. Accordingly, Woike (1994) at-
tempted to induce specific affective states by asking power- and
intimacy-motivated individuals to vividly recall an event that
had made them very happy or an event that occurred yesterday
and was ordinary. Later on, research participants completed a
questionnaire on their current affective state. Using McAdams’s
(1982) scoring system for autobiographical memories, Woike
found that individuals high in power motivation generally used
more power imagery in their recollections of the happy event (per-
sonal strength, control, vigor, prestige, and recognition) and indi-
viduals high in intimacy motivation wrote memories more
associated with intimacy imagery (involving loving, caring, empa-
thy, and closeness to people) when recalling a happy event. In their
questionnaire responses, power-motivated individuals in the
pleasant-recall condition reported more excitement and anger
than did intimacy-motivated individuals in the same condition.
Anger energizes one’s efforts to create impact and therefore elicits
 E.M. Fodor, D.P. Wick / Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 721–726
positive emotions such as excitement in power-motivated persons
(Woike & McAdams, 2005).
Previous research has consistently shown that people can rate
the degree to which facial expressions denote dominance (power)
and affiliation (cf. Knutson, 1996). Specifically, people see joyful
expressions as high on both dominance and affiliation, whereas
they perceive angry faces as connoting high dominance but low
affiliation. Looking at these data, Schultheiss and Hale (2007)
hypothesized that the incentive value of a facial expression is recip-
rocally related to the dominance it displays, because an expression
from another that connotes dominance signals to high-power per-
sons that they have failed to exert control. Stated differently, facial
expressions that suggest high dominance, notably, anger and joy,
act as disincentives in the minds of high-power persons. Surprise,
on the other hand, figures as an incentive for high-power persons,
implying that they have registered an impact on the person exhib-
iting a surprise reaction.
Through a procedure involving Mogg and Bradley’s (1999) dot-
probe task, Schultheiss and Hale obtained evidence that supported
their predictions. Power-motivated individuals showed high vigi-
lance for low-dominance, and therefore rewarding, facial expres-
sions that denoted surprise. On the other hand, they oriented
away from the high-dominance, and therefore aversive, anger
and joy facial expressions.
5. Overview
We designed an experiment calculated to further explore McC-
lelland’s power-stress concept. The form power stress assumed in
this experiment was negative audience reaction to an extempora-
neous speech that student participants delivered in an attempt to
demonstrate that they were deserving of a $20,000 college scholar-
ship based on their capabilities, achievements, and extracurricular
activities. Although they understood that the situation was hypo-
thetical, i.e., no scholarship was in the offing, their written instruc-
tions exhorted them to be persuasive in extolling their virtues,
trying their best to make a favorable impression on the seated
audience. The two-person audience playacted either a negative
or a moderately positive script in reaction to the student partici-
pant’s presentation.
Two hypotheses guided our research endeavor. We predicted
that power-motivated participants would exhibit higher levels of
electromyographic activity in the brow supercilii when confronted
by a negative audience reaction to their speech than would low-
power participants and higher than all participants experiencing
a favorable reaction. Second and closely related to the foregoing
hypothesis, we expected the same outcome pattern for the Anxiety
subscale of Downey and Feldman’s (1996) Affect Balance Scale.
6. Methods
6.1. Participants
Participants consisted of 259 male and female students ob-
tained through introductory psychology classes in exchange for re-
search-participation credit toward their course grade. In small
groups of 10–25 students, all completed the Picture Story Exercise
(PSE) which was scored for power imagery. Mean scores for men
and women were virtually identical. Students scoring in the top
and bottom 27% of the need-for-power distribution qualified for
the laboratory experiment. Carver and Scheier (2004) recommend
a procedure whereby one selects as experimental participants per-
sons who score high and low on a personality measure. This proce-
dure best demonstrates that the personality variable exerts an
effect on observed behavior if indeed such a relationship exists.
723
Cox (1957) provides evidence that cutoff points at the top and bot-
tom 27% most ideally suit this purpose. The experiment consisted
of a 2 (high vs. low need for power)  2 (positive vs. negative audi-
ence reaction)  2 (male vs. female participants) factorial design
consisting of eight cells each containing 16 participants.
6.2. The Picture Story Exercise (PSE) measure of need for power
When taking the PSE, research participants write stories to a
series of ambiguous drawings, usually six when the research focus
is human motivation. The PSE is an implicit measure of motivation,
that is, psychologists view the stories people write less as a
description of objective reality than as a reflection of inner person-
ality dynamics that at least partly reside below the level of con-
scious awareness. Scoring is by means of a standardized coding
system. There is an abundant literature that testifies to the PSE’s
validity in research on motivation (cf. Fodor, in press; McAdams,
2005; Winter, 1996). Implicit motives as measured by the PSE do
not correlate with self-report measures that purport to assess the
same motives (McClelland et al., 1989; Winter, 1999). Indeed, the
available evidence suggests that these two types of measures re-
flect different kinds of motives and therefore should not be ex-
pected to correlate with each other (Schultheiss, Yankova,
Durlikov, & Schad, in press; Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, & Dun-
can, 1998).
We employed six pictures in this experiment, all of them taken
from the set compiled by Smith (1992): (1) conference group: se-
ven men around a table, (2) man with cigarette behind woman,
(3) architect at desk, (4) two women in lab coats in laboratory,
(5) ship captain, and (6) trapeze artists. Noting that PSE pictures
differ in the extent to which they elicit imagery specific to a given
motive, Schultheiss and Brunstein (2001) recommend that when
studying a specific motive researchers select pictures that elicit
imagery for that motive in roughly 50% of respondents. The pic-
tures we chose met that criterion for the power motive. The scor-
ing system commonly in use that has survived through time is the
one created by Winter (1973). He presents a procedure by which a
researcher can achieve high interrater reliability calibrated against
expert scoring. The manual presents four practice sets of 30 stories
each. The person wishing to achieve scoring proficiency scores
these sets one at a time, stopping at the end of each to make a stud-
ied comparison against the expert scoring the manual provides.
The investigator then determines scoring proficiency by scoring
three final sets without pausing at the end of each. Each set again
contains 30 stories. The manual describes two measures by which
to assess interrater reliability (between the researcher and the ex-
pert scoring). The first is category agreement, which assesses how
closely the scorer agrees with the standard (expert scoring) on
whether power imagery is present or absent. The second is a rank
correlation between the researcher’s scoring and the expert scoring
provided by the manual. This measure is expressed as a q coeffi-
cient. For each measure, Winter recommends that the researcher
strive to achieve a reliability figure of .85. Strictly following this
procedure, the first author obtained a figure of .94 for category
agreement and a q coefficient of .88 for correlation of ranks. He
alone scored the PSEs participants wrote for the present experi-
ment. (However, he and a trained undergraduate research assistant
independently scored 29 PSE protocols for power imagery and ob-
tained a Pearson correlation for raw score of .89.) Raw power mo-
tive scores ranged from a low of zero to a high of 23. The Pearson
correlation coefficient between raw score and word length was .11
(ns), so no correction was made for word length. Raw scores were
converted to T-scores (M = 50, SD = 10). T-scores ranged from 28.6
to 79.6. A T-score of 57.7 was the cutoff for the top 27% (high need
for power), and a score of 43.4 for the lower 27% (low need for
power). Past research indicates that men and women on average
724 E.M. Fodor, D.P. Wick / Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 721–726
do not differ in power motivation (Woike & McAdams, 2005). Our
data likewise showed that the mean, range, and variance were vir-
tually identical across gender.
6.3. Electromyographic recordings from the corrugator supercilii
A Coulbourn electromyograph was used to measure electrical
activity in the corrugator/depressor supercilii complex of the brow
muscles in the upper facial region. One positive and one negative
electrode, centering a ground electrode, monitored electrical activ-
ity at the skin surface associated with muscle contractions. The
electrodes were contained in a single unit, approximately two in
long, for ease of application. Signal quality and consistency were
enhanced with the application of a conducting gel (TECA Model
912–6039). Appropriate placement of the electrodes was verified
by observing signal quality with a Tektronix oscilloscope prior to
data collection.
The processing of the EMG signal included amplification (High-
Performance Bioamplifier Model S75-03) using a constant gain of
100,000, and band pass filter (Model S75-76) to eliminate high-fre-
quency noise above 1,000 Hz and low-frequency noise below
100 Hz. A cumulating-resetting integrator (Model S76-22) de-
tected area content of the time trace and converted the resulting
analog signal into corresponding 0.1 lV s digital pulses, whose fre-
quency was thus proportional to the magnitude of the filtered sig-
nal. A 60 s timer (Model S53-21) permitted the pulses to be
counted and recorded during successive intervals before the inte-
grator was reset. The resulting numbers that emerge from the prin-
ter represent microvolts.
7. Procedure
Participants went through the experiment one at a time. The
experimenter began the laboratory session by attaching electrodes
to the brow supercilii to obtain electromyographic recordings. The
participant then underwent a 5-min progressive relaxation exer-
cise to determine base rate in EMG activity (Fridlund & Cacioppo,
1986; Jacobson, 1938; Woolfolk & Richardson, 1978). The experi-
menter then presented the participant with written instructions
on how the participant should spend 10 min preparing a speech
while making notations on index cards. Instructions strongly
emphasized that the participant should attempt to be persuasive,
to put his or her best foot forward.
Random placement determined which condition of the experi-
ment a participant experienced. The speech itself lasted 3 min.
Two people – one female, one male – comprised the audience.
The stress condition followed a precisely enacted script. It started
off with both actors looking politely at the participant. Fifteen sec-
onds into the speech, the young woman crossed her legs and began
looking at her hands. The young man began to shift in his chair. The
woman continued looking around. The man looked at his watch,
then briefly gaped out the window. At approximately 1 min into
the speech, the actors looked at each other and raised their eye-
brows. They then looked back at the participant delivering the
speech. Both continued to shift their gaze to their hands or the
floor, rarely looking at the participant. Approximately 2 12 min into
the speech, near the end, the woman gave off a visible sigh. The ac-
tors continued to look around for the remaining 30 s. The man, for
his part, twiddled his thumbs a lot, looked at the clock a few times,
yawned at specific junctures, avoided eye contact with the partic-
ipant, and attempted to create an impression of indifference to the
speech. During the unstressed condition, both actors expressed
moderate but not excessive, interest in the participant’s presenta-
tion, occasionally nodding in agreement with what the participant
was saying and making continuous eye contact, giving off an
impression that they were ‘‘holding on to every word.”
Immediately thereafter, participants first answered the ques-
tion, How much interest would you say the audience showed in
your presentation? (Circle your answer.) There were seven points
along the scale with scale point 1 designated as little interest, point
4 as moderate interest, and point 7 as much interest. Next, they com-
pleted the Anxiety subscale of the Affect Balance Scale (Downey &
Feldman, 1996). Five items comprise the subscale: nervous, agi-
tated, tense, on edge, and anxious. These are five-point scales rang-
ing from 0 to 4. These items are embedded within other items that
bear no relevance to the present inquiry. The Anxiety items, there-
fore, do not blatantly stand out as suggesting that they are the fo-
cus of the investigation. We obtained an alpha coefficient for this
scale of .76. Lastly, the experimenter provided a brief explanation
of the experiment, including the need for deception, and urgently
requested that participants not discuss the experience with other
students.
8. Results
The experimental manipulation was effective. Participants’ rat-
ings of judges’ interest in their talks ranged from 1 (little interest)
to 7 (much interest). Responses were as predicted to the question,
‘‘How much interest would you say the audience showed in your
presentation?” The mean for the stress condition (bored judges)
was 1.7 (SD = .7) and 4.2 (SD = 1.3) for the nonstress condition
(mildly interested judges). The difference yielded an F value of
15.13 (p < .001, df = 1, 126). We treated the EMG data, expressed
as microvolts, first by adding the readings per minute across the
last 3 min of the 5-min relaxation period. The readings for the 3-
min speech period underwent the same calculation. We subtracted
the former figure from the latter to obtain a difference measure.
There is no absolute scale in surface electromyography, so method
of quantification varies according to specific circumstances (Cram
& Kasman, 1998; Fridlund & Cacioppo, 1986; Jennings & Stine,
2000). In the present instance, the EMG difference figures varied
widely, ranging from very low to very high, and were positively
skewed. We chose to reduce the skewness and normalize these
data by means of logarithmic transformation. This method con-
forms closely to recommended procedure for analyzing psycho-
physiological data (Jennings & Stine, 2000). The results of this
transformation appear in Fig. 1 as bar graphs. Inspection of these
graphs suggests that for both men and women, persons scoring
high in power motivation evince high EMG responsivity from the
brow supercilii in the speech-stress condition, higher than persons
5.00
Electromyographic Measure
4.00
3.00
2.00
Speech Speech Nonstress/High Nonstress/Low
Stress/High Stress/Low Need for Power Need for Power
Need for Power Need for Power
Men Women
Fig. 1. Mean EMG measures from the brow supercilii muscles expressed as
logarithmic transformations. Error bars represent standard errors of the mean.
 E.M. Fodor, D.P. Wick / Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 721–726
low in power motivation, and higher than all participants sub-
jected to the nonstress condition.
A three-way ANOVA applied to the EMG data produced a main
effect for the power-stress vs. nonstress variable (F = 6.13; df = 1,
120; p < .02), for the high- vs. low-power variable (F = 10.59;
df = 1, 120; p < .01), and for the gender variable (F = 8.22; df = 1,
120; p < .01). Most importantly and as predicted, there occurred
an interaction effect between the power-motivation variable and
condition of the experiment (F = 4.5; df = 1, 120; p < .05). It was
the power-motivated participants who most registered an EMG
reaction from the brow corrugator muscles in response to negative
audience reaction to their extemporaneous speech. The ANOVA
yielded no additional evidence for interaction effects. We em-
ployed Tukey’s honestly significant difference test (HSD) to evalu-
ate pairwise comparisons. Combining scores across gender, the
mean of 3.73 for power-motivated participants in the stress condi-
tion was higher than the mean of 3.22 for low-power participants
in the same condition to a degree that was significant at the .01 le-
vel, and higher at the .01 level than the means of 3.30 and 3.19 for
high- and low-power participants, respectively, in the nonstress
condition.
Fig. 2 displays the data from the Anxiety subscale of the Affect
Balance Scale. For both men and women, those persons high in
power motivation appear to have expressed greater anxiety in re-
sponse to negative audience reaction than did persons low in
power motivation and lower than all persons subjected to the non-
stress manipulation. A three-way ANOVA resulted in a main effect
for the stress vs. nonstress variable (F = 12.57; df = 1, 120; p < .001),
a main effect for the power-motivation variable (F = 11.66; df = 1,
120; p < .001), but no main effect for gender (F < 1). Again, there
was an interaction between the power variable and condition of
the experiment (F = 4.98; df = 1, 120; p < .05), meaning that the
power-motivated participants were the ones who most reacted
to the power-stress manipulation. There was no evidence for a
three-way interaction. All pairwise comparisons between the
high-power/speech-stress cell and the remaining cells of the
experiment again were via Tukey’s HSD test, once again combining
scores across gender. The mean of 9.16 for the high-power partic-
ipants in the stress condition was higher than the corresponding
mean of 6.47 for low-power participants in the stress condition
at the .01 level of significance, and higher at the .01 level than
the means of 6.41 and 5.84 for high- and low-power participants
in the nonstress condition. The Pearson correlation between the
EMG measure as we calculated it and the Anxiety subscale mea-
sure was .43 (p < .01). This figure suggests a degree of convergent
13.00
12.00
11.00
10.00
9.00
Anxiety
8.00
7.00
6.00
5.00
4.00
3.00
Speech Speech Nonstress/High Nonstress/Low
Stress/High Stress/Low Need for Power Need for Power
Need for Power Need for Power
Men Women
Fig. 2. Mean scores on the Anxiety scale. Error bars represent standard errors of the
mean.
725
validity between the two measures. Both appear to measure the
same construct, presumably tension, one at the level of the central
nervous system and the other at the level of cognition.
9. Discussion
The findings we obtained in this experiment further support
McClelland’s power-stress theory. Negative audience reaction to
a person’s efforts to persuade constitutes a reasonable operational
definition of power stress, i.e., an event likely to thwart the power
need in a power-motivated person. By both the EMG and Anxiety
subscale measures, power-motivated persons gave evidence of an
aversive affective response to power stress in the form we pre-
sented it to them. By neither measure did persons low in power
motivation prove significantly more reactive in the stress than in
the nonstress manipulation. Affective response was of two related
but different types. EMG response is mediated through the central
nervous system and therefore does not directly represent an aspect
of autonomic nervous system functioning. It nevertheless closely
parallels physiological responsivity, especially as regards the car-
diovascular system (Levenson, 1983). The evidence suggests that
EMG activity is largely unconscious and also undetectable to an ob-
server (Bradley, 2000). Response to the Anxiety subscale, on the
other hand, is fully conscious and capable of verbal expression.
The two kinds of responsivity reflect different categories of func-
tioning: one at the level of the central nervous system and uncon-
scious, the other cognitive and fully conscious.
Seen in aggregate, studies of people scoring high in power moti-
vation show that they exhibit chronic, high levels of sympathetic
nervous system arousal in response to threat and stress (McClel-
land, 1989; Winter, 1996). That is, they respond to threat with a
fight-or-flight reaction. High levels of sympathetic activation over
time, the evidence shows, leads to lowered efficiency of the im-
mune system, thereby producing more infectious diseases and also
a variety of health problems, especially high blood pressure. Inso-
far as EMG readings correlate with cardiovascular responsivity, the
present findings would appear to extend the range of experiences
that may impair cardiovascular health in power-motivated
persons.
The finding of a main effect for gender in EMG responsivity is
worthy of mention. Women, it will be recalled, showed greater
reactivity than men from the brow supercilii in response to both
conditions of the experiment. Diener, Sandvik, and Larsen (1985)
as well as Brody and Hall (2000) found that women experience
more intense emotions than men. The main effect for gender did
not occur with the Anxiety subscale of the Affect Balance Scale,
however.
The bar graphs represented by Figs. 1 and 2 do not suggest a
phobic reaction to public speaking situations in general, that is,
no significant differences between high- and low-power persons
appear evident in the nonstress condition. Internal analysis of the
data indeed validates the visual impression. The small differences
are nonsignificant. Nevertheless, power-motivated persons appear
vulnerable to the power stress implicit in a negative audience reac-
tion. As Comer (2007) observes, however, anxiety that arises from a
public performance does not necessarily eventuate in a poor per-
formance as evaluated by others. Woody (1996) found that social
phobics when speaking before an audience rated themselves as
more anxious than did trained clinical psychology graduate stu-
dents who observed videotapes of their presentations.
There are careers that regularly place their occupants before
groups toward whom they are attempting to exert influence but
from whom they are equally likely to experience resistance and
antagonism. One thinks immediately of politicians and labor-man-
agement negotiators. The findings we obtained, together with the
726 E.M. Fodor, D.P. Wick / Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 721–726
theoretical rationale on which they are based, suggest that certain
occupations may pose repeated exposures to stress of a kind that
can threaten cardiovascular health for persons high in power
motivation.
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