A SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE PERSPECTIVE ON POWER DYNAMICS
Dr Melike Fourie, senior lecturer and researcher, University of Cape Town
Tuesday 26 January < 3.00 pm < COURSE FEES R115; Staff and students R58
This lecture is part of the Neuroscience Institute’s ‘Hot Topics in Neuroscience’ series.
Power permeates all aspects of society, shaping the hierarchical nature that defines our social structures and relationships. While it is hard to delineate this evolutionary social function, we all have a fundamental need for power, and know when we don’t possess it. Recent research shows that our brains are engineered to be exquisitely sensitive to detecting hierarchy and status differences, and that our individual sense of power can influence not only how we approach personal goals and risks, but also how attuned we are to others. For both individual and collective wellbeing, it is therefore vital that interpersonal power dynamics remain healthy. This lecture will explore the brain-based explanation of how power is detected in others, how it changes our own responses to reward and threat, and how our brains encode complex social information about the strengths, emotions, and intentions of other individuals to attain power. In an evolutionary twist of fate, the allure of power drives us to forfeit the very prosocial skills that enabled us to attain power in the first place.
Recommended reading
Dwortz, MF, Curley, JP, Tye, KM and Padilla-Coreano, N. 2022. Neural Systems that Facilitate the Representation of Social Rank. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 28; 377(1845):20200444.
Hogeveen, J, Inzlicht, M and Obhi, SS. 2014. Power Changes How the Brain Responds to Others. J Exp Psychol, 143(2):755–762. doi: 10.1037/a0033477.
Keltner, D. 2016. The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence. Penguin Books Ltd.
Yan, R and Lin, D. 2026. Neural Basis of Social Hierarchy Across Species. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 27, pp. 494–512. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-026-01047-z
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