Responses to individuals who suffer are a foundation of cooperative communities. On the basis of the approach/inhibition theory of power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), we hypothesized that elevated social power is associated with diminished reciprocal emotional responses to another person's suffering (feeling distress at another person's distress) and with diminished complementary emotion (e.g., compassion). In face-to-face conversations, participants disclosed experiences that had caused them suffering. As predicted, participants with a higher sense of power experienced less distress and less compassion and exhibited greater autonomic emotion regulation when confronted with another participant's suffering. Additional analyses revealed that these findings could not be attributed to power-related differences in baseline emotion or decoding accuracy, but were likely shaped by power-related differences in the motivation to affiliate. Implications for theorizing about power and the social functions of emotions are discussed.

中文翻译：

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权力、痛苦和同情

对受苦个人的回应是合作社区的基础。根据权力的接近/抑制理论（Keltner、Gruenfeld 和 Anderson，2003 年），我们假设社会权力的提高与对他人痛苦的相互情感反应的减少（对他人的痛苦感到痛苦）和减少的情感反应相关联。互补情感（例如，同情心）。在面对面的谈话中，参与者透露了让他们痛苦的经历。正如预测的那样，具有更高权力感的参与者在面对另一个参与者的痛苦时，经历的痛苦和同情心更少，并且表现出更强的自主情绪调节能力。其他分析表明，这些发现不能归因于基线情绪或解码准确性的权力相关差异，而可能是由加入动机的权力相关差异造成的。讨论了对权力和情绪的社会功能进行理论化的含义。