Power and Risk Taking: Confidence, Approach Motivation, and Decision-Making
Updated: 3 days ago
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 24, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Power can make action feel easier, rewards more reachable, and downside risks less psychologically prominent. That pattern helps explain why people who possess or experience social power sometimes become more willing to act under uncertainty. Yet the evidence does not support a simple rule that power makes people reckless. The most defensible conclusion is conditional: power tends to shift attention, affect, confidence, and behavior toward approach, and those shifts can increase risk taking when the situation makes opportunity salient and the costs of failure feel manageable. Sabey et al., 2025
The direct research on risk taking adds important limits. Classic experiments linked power with more optimistic risk perception and riskier choices, while later studies found that power can also produce caution when people fear losing their position, when the power relationship feels illegitimate, or when the decision context changes. An especially important methodological study found a small power effect on a nonconsequential self-report measure of risk taking but no significant effect on two consequential measures. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006 Maner et al., 2007 Khademi et al., 2021
This article owns the narrower canonical question of how social power relates to risk perception, confidence, approach motivation, advice taking, and decision-making under uncertainty. For the broader scientific construct, see Social Power: Definition, Types, French and Raven, Keltner, and Modern Psychology. For the much broader question of how power changes behavior and morality, see Does Power Corrupt? Psychology, Morality, Behavior, and the Power Paradox.
What Does “Power and Risk Taking” Mean in Psychology?
In social psychology, power usually refers to asymmetric control over valued resources, outcomes, opportunities, or constraints that make other people relatively dependent on the power holder. This is a relational construct. It is not identical to being admired, occupying a formal office, being dominant in temperament, feeling personally autonomous, or having a strong desire to lead. Reviews of hierarchy research treat power and status as distinct bases of social rank: power concerns control over resources and outcomes, whereas status concerns respect and esteem. Magee & Galinsky, 2008
That distinction matters for risk research. A manager can have formal authority but feel little discretionary power; a high-status expert can command respect without controlling anyone’s outcomes; a person can have strong personal control over their own life without having power over others. The English Hub therefore treats Power vs Status, Power vs Authority, and Power and Control as separate canonical questions rather than interchangeable labels.
Risk taking, meanwhile, is not one universal tendency. Research on domain-specific risk shows that the same person can be relatively risk seeking in one domain and cautious in another. Financial, health and safety, recreational, ethical, and social risks can differ substantially in perceived benefits, perceived danger, and willingness to act. That is why a finding from a gambling task should not automatically be generalized to medical, sexual, career, political, or organizational decisions. Weber et al., 2002
Short Answer: Does Power Increase Risk Taking?
Often, but not uniformly. The classic result is that higher power can increase willingness to take risks by increasing approach motivation and optimism about outcomes. In five studies, Cameron Anderson and Adam Galinsky found that a stronger sense of power was associated with more optimistic perceptions of risk and, in several tasks, more risk-seeking behavior. Their mediation analyses pointed to optimistic risk perceptions rather than self-efficacy as the key pathway in those studies. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
The broader motivational picture is now better supported than it was when those early studies appeared. A 2025 Psychological Bulletin meta-analysis synthesized 1,712 effect sizes from 813 independent samples across 432 manuscripts and 269,534 participants. It found broad support for the approach-inhibition theory of power: power was positively related to approach-oriented outcomes such as attention to rewards, positive affect, automatic cognition, and disinhibited behavior, and negatively related to inhibition-oriented outcomes. Sabey et al., 2025
But that meta-analysis does not establish a universal “power causes risk” law. Risk taking is one possible behavioral expression of a broader approach orientation, and direct risk effects depend on how power is created or measured, whether the choice has real consequences, what the person is trying to protect or gain, and whether responsibility, legitimacy, hierarchy stability, or cognitive load changes the decision.
Why Power Can Increase Risk Taking
Approach motivation: power can orient attention toward rewards and action
The influential approach-inhibition theory proposed that elevated power is associated with greater access to rewards and freedom from constraints, which activates approach-related tendencies. Lower power, by contrast, is associated with greater exposure to threat, punishment, dependence, and social constraint, which activates inhibition. The theory predicts differences in affect, attention, cognition, and disinhibited behavior rather than a single outcome. Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003
Early dyadic studies provided preliminary empirical support: people with greater power or resource control expressed their attitudes more directly, experienced more positive and less negative affect, attended more to potential rewards, and were less focused on threats. These findings helped move power research away from a purely institutional description and toward measurable psychological processes. Anderson & Berdahl, 2002
A later integrative review reframed power as an intensifier of goal-related approach motivation. On this account, power energizes thought, speech, and action and can increase focus on whatever goals are active in the person or role. That formulation is useful for risk taking because it predicts conditionality: if the salient goal favors expansion, acquisition, innovation, or action, power may facilitate risk; if the salient goal is preserving a threatened position, the same energizing quality can support caution. Guinote, 2017
Optimistic risk perception: danger can look smaller
Risk taking can rise without a person becoming more attracted to danger itself. In Anderson and Galinsky’s studies, power was associated with more optimistic perceptions of risk, and those perceptions statistically mediated the relationship between power and risk-seeking behavior. In practical terms, a powerful decision maker may see the probability or severity of failure as lower, making an uncertain option appear more acceptable. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
A later review of power and action developed a related account: power may facilitate action partly by reducing psychological “brakes,” including the perceived probability and anticipated pain of failure. This is a theoretical synthesis of a body of findings rather than proof that every powerful person underestimates every risk. Pike & Galinsky, 2020
This distinction between risk preference and risk perception is central. Two people can choose differently not because one intrinsically likes uncertainty more, but because they perceive the same option’s expected benefits and hazards differently. Domain-specific risk research has long shown that perceived benefits and perceived risk help explain variation in apparent risk taking. Weber et al., 2002
Confidence and overconfidence: feeling powerful can change calibration
Power can also affect confidence in one’s own judgments. Five experiments by Fast and colleagues found that experiencing power increased overconfident decision-making across several operationalizations of power. In some studies, the resulting decisions produced monetary losses. The researchers found that subjective sense of power played a central role: objective power predicted overconfidence when it translated into feeling powerful. Fast et al., 2012
This matters because confidence has two very different forms. Calibrated confidence can help people commit to good decisions under uncertainty. Overconfidence occurs when subjective certainty exceeds what knowledge, evidence, or predictive accuracy justifies. A power-induced rise in confidence can therefore be adaptive when it reduces paralyzing hesitation, or harmful when it outruns the information available.
The evidence also suggests that the effect is not fixed. In Fast and colleagues’ experiments, the link weakened when power was not psychologically salient or when participants’ sense of competence in the relevant domain was undermined. Power is therefore better understood as changing a decision state than as creating a permanent personality trait. Fast et al., 2012
Advice taking: confidence can reduce correction from other people
One route from confidence to poorer decisions is reduced use of advice. Across four studies, See and colleagues found that greater power was associated with less advice taking, with elevated confidence mediating that relationship. In their fourth study, higher-power participants also ended with less accurate judgments. See et al., 2011
The mechanism is important because risky decisions are rarely made from raw probabilities alone. Leaders and other power holders often receive forecasts, dissenting views, technical estimates, and warnings. If power increases confidence while reducing the weight given to outside information, errors can persist even when corrective evidence is available.
This is also why power and decision quality should not be collapsed into one outcome. A person can become more willing to act and simultaneously less open to corrective advice; another can become more decisive and also more accurate because the task rewards speed and the person has strong expertise. The psychological literature supports changes in attention, confidence, and information use, but it does not support the claim that power inevitably worsens judgment.
The Classic Evidence: Anderson and Galinsky’s 2006 Studies
The landmark paper “Power, optimism, and risk-taking” used five studies to test whether power changes risk perception and behavior. The studies included dispositional measures of generalized sense of power, experimental power primes, framing manipulations, a health-related risk scenario, and face-to-face negotiation behavior. Across this set of methods, higher power was generally associated with more optimistic risk perceptions and greater risk taking. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
Two features of that paper remain especially relevant. First, the authors did not reduce the mechanism to generic self-efficacy: optimistic risk perception was the mediator that best explained their pattern. Second, a sense of responsibility attenuated the effect in one part of the research, foreshadowing later work showing that the psychological consequences of power depend on how the role and relationship are construed. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
The paper is historically important, yet it belongs to an earlier generation of experimental social psychology in which semantic and episodic priming were used frequently. Later methodological work has shown why direct behavioral consequences, stronger power manipulations, and demand-effect controls matter. The original result should therefore be treated as a major starting point rather than a final universal estimate of how much power changes real-world risk.
Why Power Does Not Always Make People Riskier
The most important correction to popular summaries is that power can increase caution. Whether that happens depends on what is at stake. Power creates opportunities to pursue gains, but it can also create something valuable to lose. The psychological meaning of the decision changes when the person’s position, legitimacy, reputation, or control is threatened.
Power motivation and an unstable hierarchy can reverse the pattern
Maner and colleagues found that power interacted with individual differences in power motivation. In one experiment, assignment to a power position increased risk taking among people lower in power motivation but reduced it among those higher in power motivation. In another, highly power-motivated participants became more conservative when the hierarchy was unstable and their position could be lost. Maner et al., 2007
This result is conceptually important because it separates possessing power from wanting power. A strong Need for Power is a motivational construct; it is not the same thing as controlling resources or outcomes in a particular situation. When retaining power becomes the active goal, risk avoidance can serve the pursuit of power just as effectively as boldness can.
The finding also links risk taking to Social Hierarchy. A stable position and a threatened position create different incentive structures. The same executive, group leader, or negotiator may pursue uncertain gains when secure and defend the status quo when a risky move could jeopardize their rank.
Legitimacy changes the power–approach relationship
Lammers and colleagues showed that legitimacy can moderate the psychological consequences of power. Across four experiments, legitimate power was associated with more approach-oriented behavior than low power, whereas illegitimate power disrupted that pattern; the results extended to negotiation and risk preferences. Lammers et al., 2008
That does not mean illegitimate power always produces caution. It means the route from power to approach depends partly on how the power relationship is understood. Formal position, subjective legitimacy, social acceptance, and perceived security can alter what being “powerful” psychologically means in the moment.
Responsibility can reduce risk amplification
The Anderson and Galinsky experiments found that when high-power participants experienced greater responsibility, the increase in risk taking was attenuated. That is an early empirical indication that power framed as responsibility can produce a different decision orientation from power framed primarily as freedom, opportunity, or personal control over outcomes. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
Responsibility is its own psychological topic and should not be treated as merely the opposite of risk taking. The present article uses it only as a moderator of the power–risk relationship. Questions about duty, stewardship, leadership burden, and accountability remain separate intents in the cluster. For that dedicated intent, see Power and Responsibility: Leadership, Moral Obligation, and the Burden of Control.
Cognitive load can erase a power–risk association
A 2025 study of financial decision-making found that personal sense of power predicted greater financial risk taking when participants had full access to cognitive resources, but the association became nonsignificant under cognitive load. The online experiment included 192 participants and examined gambling and investing decisions. Sekścińska et al., 2025
This is useful because it shows that power does not operate in isolation from cognitive conditions. Time pressure, divided attention, fatigue, information overload, and task complexity may alter how confidence and perceived control translate into decisions. The study itself examined cognitive load, so broader applications should be treated as plausible extensions rather than direct demonstrations.
Financial Risk Taking: Investment and Gambling
Financial choices provide a particularly clear test because the options can be structured around uncertain gains and losses. Two studies published in the Journal of Economic Psychology examined trait-like sense of power and experimentally induced state power in investment and gambling contexts. Across samples of 104 and 359 participants, sense of power was positively associated with riskier investment portfolios and gambling choices, and state power was also related to riskier choices. Sekścińska, Rudzińska-Wojciechowska, & Kusev, 2022
The interaction between a relatively stable sense of power and a situational state of power is especially informative. It suggests that researchers should not ask only whether a person “is powerful.” A person can differ in chronic perceptions of agency and influence while also entering temporary roles or situations that heighten or reduce felt power. Those layers can combine rather than map cleanly onto one category. Sekścińska et al., 2022
The later cognitive-load study adds a boundary condition: the positive association between sense of power and financial risk taking was present under full cognitive resources but not under load. Taken together, these studies support a relationship in financial tasks while also warning against treating it as mechanically inevitable. Sekścińska et al., 2025
Consequential Choices Versus Hypothetical or Self-Report Risk
One of the strongest methodological cautions comes from Khademi and colleagues. In an incentivized online study with 1,632 participants, they varied the method used to manipulate power and whether a manipulation check was administered, then measured risk taking with one nonconsequential self-report measure and two consequential behavioral measures. Khademi et al., 2021
They found that power priming and manipulation checks increased participants’ awareness of the study hypothesis. They also replicated a positive effect of power on risk taking only for the nonconsequential measure, where the effect was small. Power had no significant impact on either consequential risk measure. Khademi et al., 2021
This does not erase the earlier literature. It changes how confidently it should be generalized. Self-reports, hypothetical choices, recall primes, laboratory role assignments, incentivized decisions, field measures of organizational power, and real institutional authority are different research designs. A mature synthesis asks whether conclusions survive across those methods instead of treating any one paradigm as the whole phenomenon.
Objective Power and the Subjective Sense of Power
Objective power and subjective power can diverge. A person may control resources yet feel constrained by boards, regulators, clients, superiors, norms, or uncertainty. Another person may occupy a modest formal role yet feel highly influential in a specific interaction. Several risk and overconfidence studies point to felt power as a psychologically important mediator.
Fast and colleagues found that objective power produced overconfident decision-making when it led people to feel subjectively powerful. When access to power was not salient or participants’ competence was challenged, the overconfidence effect weakened. Fast et al., 2012
For the same reason, research about “personal control” cannot simply substitute for research about social power. Personal control concerns one’s ability to determine one’s own outcomes; social power concerns asymmetrical influence over others’ outcomes and resources. The distinction is developed in Power and Control: Why Power Over Others Differs From Personal Control.
Power, Action, and Decision Quality
Power is often associated with action. That can be advantageous in situations where hesitation is costly, coordination requires commitment, or a decision must be made with incomplete information. Guinote’s review describes power as energizing goal-directed thought and action, while Pike and Galinsky emphasize the removal of psychological barriers to action. Guinote, 2017 Pike & Galinsky, 2020
The same mechanisms can produce errors when action outruns calibration. Optimistic risk perception can make downside probabilities look smaller; overconfidence can inflate certainty; reduced advice taking can narrow the information entering the decision. The relevant question is therefore not whether power makes people “bold,” but whether the increased readiness to act remains matched to evidence, expertise, consequences, and feedback.
This distinction helps explain why broad cultural slogans about decisive leadership are scientifically weak. Decisiveness is behavior. Accuracy is performance. Confidence is a subjective state. Risk tolerance is a preference or choice tendency. Power is a relational condition. These variables can correlate, but they are not interchangeable.
Risk appetite is not the same as poor decision-making
A risky option can be rational when its expected benefits justify its uncertainty. A conservative option can be irrational when fear prevents a high-value action. Risk taking becomes problematic when perceived probabilities, consequences, or benefits are miscalibrated relative to the available evidence—not merely because uncertainty is present.
Power research is therefore most useful when it identifies process changes: what the decision maker notices, how threatening failure feels, how certain they feel, which goals dominate attention, and how much weight they give to other people’s information. Those processes can improve or degrade a decision depending on the task.
The goal attached to power matters
Guinote’s goal-focused account predicts that power amplifies pursuit of salient goals rather than imposing one fixed behavioral script. A power holder focused on growth may take expansion risks; one focused on protecting a fragile position may avoid them; one acting under a stewardship norm may prioritize caution; another focused on speed may suppress deliberation. Guinote, 2017
This goal dependence also helps preserve the boundary with Power and Morality. A risky decision can be ethical, unethical, or morally neutral. The psychology of uncertain choice belongs here; the narrower evidence about moral judgment, self-interest, responsibility, and ethical conduct belongs to the morality article.
What the 2025 Meta-Analysis Changes
The 2025 meta-analysis is the most important recent update to the theoretical backbone of this literature. It examined more than two decades of research on the approach-inhibition theory and found broad support for the theory across a very large evidence base. Power was positively related to approach-oriented attention, cognition, affect, and behavior and negatively related to inhibition-oriented outcomes. Approach associations were larger than inhibition associations. Sabey et al., 2025
The analysis also addressed mediation. It found that power’s behavioral effects operated indirectly through attention, cognition, and affect, with affect carrying much of the indirect effect. This is more informative than saying simply that “power makes people take risks,” because it identifies a family of psychological processes through which behavioral consequences can emerge. Sabey et al., 2025
At the same time, the meta-analysis should not be stretched beyond what it tested. It synthesizes the approach-inhibition framework broadly. Direct risk-taking outcomes have their own designs, moderators, and measurement problems. The best current reading combines the meta-analytic support for the general approach shift with the mixed, context-sensitive direct evidence on risky choice.
Evidence Status: What Is Established, What Is Conditional
Established at the broadest level: social power is associated with systematic changes in approach- and inhibition-related psychology. The 2025 meta-analysis provides strong evidence that power is related to reward attention, affect, cognition, and behavioral disinhibition across a large body of studies. Sabey et al., 2025
Well-supported but conditional: power can increase optimistic risk perception, subjective confidence, overconfidence, reduced advice taking, and willingness to choose uncertain options in particular paradigms. Multiple primary studies converge on these mechanisms, but the size and generality of direct risk effects depend on measurement and context. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006 Fast et al., 2012 See et al., 2011
Established boundary conditions in specific studies: threatened or unstable power can increase conservatism among people strongly motivated to retain power; illegitimacy can disrupt the usual power–approach pattern; responsibility can attenuate increased risk taking; cognitive load can remove an observed association between sense of power and financial risk. Maner et al., 2007 Lammers et al., 2008 Sekścińska et al., 2025
Methodologically contested generalization: some classic power-priming effects may partly reflect demand characteristics, and results obtained with hypothetical or self-report outcomes do not necessarily replicate on incentivized consequential measures. This makes “power causes risk taking” too strong as a blanket causal statement. Khademi et al., 2021
Power Is Not the Same as Status, Dominance, Authority, or Control
Power versus status
Status is the respect, admiration, or esteem a person receives from others; power concerns asymmetric control over valued outcomes or resources. High status can produce influence without direct control, and high power can exist without admiration. This distinction is foundational in modern hierarchy research. Magee & Galinsky, 2008 The dedicated comparison is Power vs Status: Social Power, Prestige, Dominance, and Hierarchy.
Power versus authority
Authority is socially recognized or legitimate right to direct, decide, or command within a role or institution. Power can exist without legitimacy, while authority normally claims some recognized basis for compliance. Because legitimacy moderates approach and risk preferences in power research, collapsing authority into power can hide an important explanatory variable. See Power vs Authority: Weber, Legitimacy, Influence, and Obedience.
Power versus personal control
Personal control is control over one’s own outcomes; social power is the capacity to shape others’ outcomes. They can covary, but research and theory treat them as distinguishable. A person may have autonomy without having subordinates, or command subordinates while feeling personally constrained by an institution. See Power and Control.
Power versus need for power
Need for power refers to motivation to influence, control, or have impact. It is a motivational construct associated with McClelland’s nPower tradition, not a measure of how much structural power a person currently possesses. The Maner studies are especially instructive because power motivation changed how an assigned power position affected risky choice. See Need for Power: McClelland’s nPower, Personalized Power, and Socialized Power.
What This Means for Leadership and Organizational Decisions
Power is built into organizations because someone must allocate resources, approve projects, set priorities, evaluate performance, and resolve uncertainty. The psychological evidence therefore has practical relevance, but it should be applied at the level of decision process rather than personality labels. A leader who holds more power is not thereby “a risk taker”; the concern is that power can change what feels rewarding, threatening, likely, and worth listening to.
A useful organizational warning comes from advice-taking research. If greater power increases confidence and reduces reliance on others’ input, hierarchical systems can create an information bottleneck precisely where the consequences are largest. The problem is not that leaders should defer to every opinion. It is that confidence can become less responsive to evidence when disagreement is easy to discount. See et al., 2011
A second warning comes from consequential-measure research. Laboratory willingness to endorse a risky option does not automatically predict expensive real-world behavior. Incentives, accountability, professional expertise, repeated feedback, legal exposure, team structure, and institutional checks can change decisions. Khademi et al., 2021
A third implication is that security and threat matter. When leaders believe their own position is unstable, preserving power may become the salient goal, producing conservative or status-quo-protective decisions rather than generalized boldness. Maner et al., 2007 This belongs to the broader architecture of Power Dynamics rather than to a simple personality story.
How Decision Systems Can Reduce Power-Related Calibration Problems
The evidence favors structural safeguards over attempts to tell powerful people simply to “be humble.” The recurring mechanisms are confidence, information weighting, perceived downside, and goal focus. Decision systems can therefore be designed to make uncertainty, dissent, and consequences harder to ignore.
Independent estimates before group discussion can preserve information that might otherwise disappear after a high-power person announces a confident view. Requiring the decision maker to state probabilities, assumptions, and conditions for changing course can also separate confidence from evidence. These are general decision-design practices; the power literature supports the underlying concern about advice discounting and overconfidence, while specific implementations should be evaluated in their own evidence base. See et al., 2011 Fast et al., 2012
Real consequences and behaviorally meaningful tasks matter for calibration. The Khademi study showed that a positive power–risk effect appeared on a nonconsequential measure but not on two consequential measures, underscoring the value of testing how decisions behave when costs and incentives are genuine. Khademi et al., 2021
Responsibility framing may also matter. Anderson and Galinsky found that responsibility attenuated the effect of power on risk taking in their research. Organizations can make responsibility concrete through explicit ownership of outcomes, review procedures, and traceable reasoning, although those institutional practices should not be treated as experimentally validated interventions merely because responsibility moderated one power study. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
Finally, decision processes should preserve the distinction between useful action and reckless action. Power can reduce hesitation and facilitate goal pursuit; those effects are valuable when the underlying judgment is sound. The objective is calibrated action: enough confidence to decide, enough openness to update, and enough attention to downside risk that boldness remains connected to reality.
Common Myths About Power and Risk Taking
Myth 1: Power always makes people reckless
The evidence shows a conditional relationship. Power can increase risk taking, but threatened positions, high power motivation, illegitimacy, responsibility, cognitive load, and measurement design can weaken or reverse the pattern. Maner et al., 2007 Lammers et al., 2008 Sekścińska et al., 2025
Myth 2: More confidence means better decisions
Confidence and accuracy are different variables. Power can increase confidence while reducing advice taking, and some experiments have found lower final accuracy among higher-power participants. See et al., 2011
Myth 3: Low power simply makes people risk-averse
Lower power is associated more broadly with inhibition, threat sensitivity, and constraint, but that does not translate into universal risk aversion. Risk is domain-specific, and low-power actors may take substantial risks when risk offers a route out of dependence or toward status, resources, or autonomy. The evidence requires attention to goals and context rather than a fixed stereotype.
Myth 4: A power prime tells us what CEOs, judges, physicians, or political leaders will do
Experimental primes can test mechanisms, but they are not miniature replicas of institutions. Real power roles involve repeated interactions, selection effects, expertise, accountability, incentives, legal constraints, and reputational consequences. Concerns about demand effects and the difference between consequential and nonconsequential measures reinforce the need for cautious generalization. Khademi et al., 2021
Frequently Asked Questions
Does having power make a person more likely to take risks?
On average, power often shifts psychology toward approach, reward focus, positive affect, and disinhibited action, and multiple studies have found greater risk taking under power. But the direct effect is context-sensitive and is not reliable enough to treat as a universal rule. Sabey et al., 2025 Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
Why can power increase risk taking?
Three recurring mechanisms are approach motivation, more optimistic perceptions of risk, and increased confidence. Power can also reduce attention to constraints and decrease reliance on advice, making action easier to initiate. Keltner et al., 2003 Fast et al., 2012 See et al., 2011
Is overconfidence the same as risk taking?
No. Overconfidence concerns miscalibration between certainty and accuracy. Risk taking concerns choosing an option with uncertain outcomes and possible loss. Overconfidence can increase risk in some settings, but the two constructs are distinct.
Can power make people more cautious?
Yes. In experiments by Maner and colleagues, people high in power motivation became more conservative when their powerful position was unstable and could be lost. Protecting power can itself become the dominant goal. Maner et al., 2007
Does responsibility change how power affects risk?
It can. Anderson and Galinsky reported that a sense of responsibility attenuated the effect of power on risk taking in their studies. That finding supports treating responsibility as a moderator rather than assuming all forms of power have identical consequences. Anderson & Galinsky, 2006
Does power increase financial risk taking?
Several studies report positive associations in investment and gambling tasks, including work examining both chronic sense of power and situationally induced power. A later experiment found the association under full cognitive resources but not under cognitive load. Sekścińska et al., 2022 Sekścińska et al., 2025
Are classic power-priming studies reliable?
They are informative but should be read alongside later methodological evidence. A large incentivized study found that priming and manipulation checks increased hypothesis awareness and that the power effect on risk appeared on a nonconsequential measure but not on two consequential measures. Khademi et al., 2021
Is risk taking always a negative effect of power?
No. Risk can be necessary for innovation, negotiation, investment, career moves, emergency action, and strategic change. The psychological concern is calibration: whether confidence, perceived probability, expected benefit, and downside consequences are aligned with reality.
The Larger Picture: Power Changes the Decision Environment
Power should be understood as more than a personal feeling. It alters dependence, access to resources, exposure to constraints, the consequences of mistakes, and the social flow of information. Those structural conditions can then produce psychological changes in attention, emotion, confidence, and action. That is why the Hub’s Psychology of Power treats power as a network of distinct but connected constructs rather than one trait.
For risk taking specifically, the best current model is a sequence rather than a slogan: power can increase approach orientation; approach can make rewards and action more salient; power can increase optimism or confidence; confidence can change information search and advice weighting; and the resulting decision depends on the domain, incentives, legitimacy, responsibility, hierarchy stability, cognitive resources, and consequences.
This sequence also explains why apparently contradictory findings can coexist. A secure power holder pursuing expansion may accept more uncertainty. A threatened power holder protecting a fragile position may avoid it. Both responses can be power-related because the active goal, not power alone, organizes the decision. Guinote, 2017 Maner et al., 2007
The evidence therefore supports neither the romantic idea that power creates fearless rationality nor the cynical idea that power mechanically produces reckless behavior. Power changes the psychological conditions of choice. Risk emerges from what those changed conditions make salient, credible, rewarding, threatening, and actionable.