The power shield: Powerful roles eliminate gender disparities in political elections.

Are women less likely to win elections than men? Past analyses of U.S. elections have found little evidence of gender bias, leading some scholars to declare: "When women run, women win." However, across many professional domains, women face disparate outcomes in achieving leadership positions. The current research resolves this puzzle through a novel theoretical perspective and methodological advances. Theoretically, we propose that power frees women from restrictive gender norms, reducing gender bias. Thus, gender bias likely exists in politics but is more pronounced for lower-power candidates and less pronounced for higher-power candidates. Because incumbent candidates have more power and challenger candidates less power, we predicted incumbent women would be shielded from gender bias and achieve electoral parity with incumbent men. Conversely, we predicted challenger women would face particularly strong gender bias and disparate outcomes. Methodologically, we resolve prior scope-of-analysis limitations by analyzing every governor and U.S. senator election since women's suffrage (1920). Further, we developed a novel bootstrapping method that resolves regression assumption violations inherent in statistical analyses of candidate-level measures. Analyses revealed 2 important findings. First, our comprehensive dataset revealed that, contrary to past research, women were less likely to win elections than men overall. Second, we found evidence for a power shield effect: Male challengers were three times more likely to win than female challengers, men were 25% more likely than women to win open-seat races, but female incumbents fared just as well as male incumbents. These results suggest that some gender differences may be power differences in disguise. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Power leads to action because it releases the psychological brakes on action.

Why does power lead to action? Theories of power suggest it leads to action because it presses the psychological gas pedal. A review of two decades of research finds, instead, that power releases the psychological brakes on action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by making failure seem less probable and feel less painful, thereby decreasing the downside risks of action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by shrouding the feelings and thoughts of others, thereby diminishing the perceived social costs of action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by limiting goal-inhibiting distractions, thereby promoting greater goal focus and focusing the mind on action. By removing these psychological barriers to action, power leads to action.

The Long Shadow of Rivalry: Rivalry Motivates Performance Today and Tomorrow.

Research has established that competing head to head against a rival boosts motivation and performance. The present research investigated whether rivalry can affect performance over time and in contests without rivals. We examined the long-term effects of rivalry through archival analyses of postseason performance in multiple high-stakes sports contexts: National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Men's Basketball and the major U.S. professional sports leagues: National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Hockey League (NHL). Econometric analyses revealed that postseason performance of a focal team's rival in year N predicted that focal team's postseason performance in year N + 1. Follow-up analyses suggested that the performance boost was especially pronounced when one's rival won the previous tournament. These results establish that rivalry has a long shadow: A rival team's success exerts such a powerful motivational force that it drives performance outside of direct competition with one's rival and even after a significant delay.