WHOS THE BOSS - DIFFERENTIAL ACCESSIBILITY OF DOMINANCE IDEATION IN PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

The accessibility of dominance ideation (as opposed to other types of ideation) was measured among parents with high or low perceived power as caregivers. Parents made comparative judgments of self versus child under concurrent memory load or no-load conditions. As predicted, dom inance comparisons were found to be highly accessible for low-power pa rents; that is, attentional load served to increase response latencies in all conditions except those in which low-power parents made domina nce judgments. Under cognitive load, low-power parents (unlike high-po wer parents) rated child as more dominant than self; under no led, how ever, they rated self as more dominant than child. Decision reversals in the absence of cognitive load were interpreted as ''defensive corre ctions.'' Findings are discussed with respect to the elevated use of c oercive control tactics by low-power parents.