Previous studies have shown that powerful and powerless concepts are metaphorically associated with top and bottom spaces respectively. However, this association might be contaminated by spatial and strategic biases due to the involvement of spatialized stimuli or responses. It is unknown whether power by itself can automatically activate spatial representations. To eliminate spatial and strategic biases, Experiment 1 separately presented power and spatial stimuli at the center of the screen, and participants had to classify power words and HIGH/LOW labels (Experiment 1a) or indicate up/down arrows (Experiment 1b) using a single key and follow different response rules that were combined with a Go/no-go task. Experiment 2 replicated the non-spatialized design but used an implicit power judgment task. Based upon the non-spatialized method, the results provide the first evidence that a power-space association effect still exists when eliminating spatial and strategic biases, revealing the nonconscious spatial nature of power.

先前的研究表明，强大和无能为力的概念分别与顶部和底部空间隐喻相关。然而，由于空间化刺激或反应的参与，这种关联可能会受到空间和战略偏见的污染。不知道权力本身是否可以自动激活空间表示。为了消除空间和战略偏见，实验 1 在屏幕中央分别呈现了权力和空间刺激，参与者必须对权力词和高/低进行分类标签（实验 1a）或使用单个键指示向上/向下箭头（实验 1b），并遵循与 Go/no-go 任务结合的不同响应规则。实验 2 复制了非空间化设计，但使用了隐式功率判断任务。基于非空间化方法，研究结果首次证明在消除空间和战略偏见时仍然存在权力空间关联效应，揭示权力的无意识空间性质。