The impact of power and mindfulness on empathy in Thai contexts

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to illustrate the combined effects of power and mindfulness on empathy in Thai contexts. How powerful individuals behave and manage their influence over others has important implications for societal well-being and social interaction. Because power has been shown to negatively affect interpersonal behaviors, potential factors guarding against the negative influence of power should be examined. We hypothesized that there would be a negative association between personal sense of power and empathy; a positive association between mindfulness and empathy; and that mindfulness would moderate the power-empathy relationship. A total of 191 (66 males, 125 females) Thai participants completed the study online and were assigned to either the high-power condition or lowpower condition. The study consisted of a power priming procedure and four measures producing scores for sense of power, mindfulness, empathy, cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Our results revealed that power had a negative effect on cognitive empathy but not affective empathy or overall empathy. No relationship was found between mindfulness and empathy, which may be explained via differences in mindfulness within Eastern and Western contexts. Additionally, mindfulness was not found to moderate power-empathy relationships. Future research may explore different Thai samples and utilize different measures created for Eastern samples. Field.