The power motive, group conflict, and physiological arousal.

Tested D. C. McClelland's (1976; see also PA, Vol 68:12164) theory that persons high in power motivation experience high physiological reactivity to "power stress." A group of 192 male undergraduates, from which 64 group leaders were selected by means of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) as being high or low in the need for power (n Power), participated. The 128 Ss not designated as leaders served as group members. The experiment was a 2?×?2 factorial design, in which group conflict (high, low) served as the 1st factor and leader's n Power served as the 2nd factor, which yielded 4 conditions. Group discussion focused on a controversial proposal to market a new sunlamp. The group leader was wired for electromyographic (EMG) recordings and at the end of the experiment completed R. E. Thayer's (1967, 1970) Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List. Analysis of variance for the EMG data disclosed a main effect for condition of the experiment and a marginally significant interaction effect. Consistent with McClelland's theory, the greatest EMG reactivity occurred in high-n-Power leaders subjected to group conflict. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)