Abstract:

As one of the fundamental characteristics of human society, power has been paid attention by social psychologists for a long time. Power was converted from a structural concept to a psychological one. As a psychological concept, power, whose core element is the sense of control, can be implicit or explicit. In the field of social psychology, three most representative theories of power are “the approach/inhibition theory” “the situated focus theory” and “the social distance theory”, which have distinctive theoretical bases but common predictions. Further researches on power can be improved in the following aspects, including 1) distinguishing social and personal power, 2) considering how culture, motivation and self-involvement moderate power effects, 3) integrating viewpoints from different perspectives, and 4) enriching research methods of power.

Key words: power, the approach/inhibition theory of power, the situated focus theory of power, the social distance theory of power