Does Elevated Power Lead to Approach and Reduced Power to Inhibition? Comment on Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson (2003)

Not “you're wrong” — “your studies can't tell your claim apart from a weaker one”, with the designs that would.

Moskowitz, D. S. (2004). Does Elevated Power Lead to Approach and Reduced Power to Inhibition? Comment on Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson (2003). Psychological Review, 111(3), 808–811.

Type

Journal article

Find it

doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.808

Checked

Against the abstract, 16 September 2026

Why it is on the list

Keltner, Gruenfeld and Anderson proposed independent effects: elevated power activates approach, reduced power activates inhibition. This published comment argues that the studies behind it have permitted examining the opposite effects but not the specific effects of high and low power — that is, the designs can show high and low power differing, but cannot establish that each half of the proposal does what it claims. The comment then sets out designs and analytic strategies that would permit the evaluation.

This is the objection behind OI-3’s “contested” label: the evidence offered does not distinguish the proposed effects from a weaker account. The comment sets out ways to test that distinction.

Week 12 uses this as a model for errata E‑1 through E‑5: name the claim, say what evidence would decide it, and leave it open until that test has been run.