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The Power of Pictures: Vertical Picture Angles in Power Pictures

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Conventional wisdom suggests that variations in vertical picture angle cause the subject to appear more powerful when depicted from below and less powerful when depicted from above. However, do the media actually use such associations to represent individual differences in power? We argue that the diverse perspectives of evolutionary, social learning, and embodiment theories all suggest that the association between verticality and power is relatively automatic and should, therefore, be visible in the portrayal of powerful and powerless individuals in the media. Four archival studies (with six samples) provide empirical evidence for this hypothesis and indicate that a salience power context reinforces this effect. In addition, two experimental studies confirm these effects for individuals producing media content. We discuss potential implications of this effect.
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... A warm environment might thus elicit a charismatic perception of a leader, while a cold one might not (Reh et al., 2017). In addition, the inference of power is embodied in several physical dimensions like verticality (i.e., height, facial features, and vertical distance), and body posture (Giessner & Schubert, 2007;Giessner et al., 2011;Lakens et al., 2011;Schubert, 2005). The vertical dimension in space is a prime example and offers various possibilities to stage oneself that leaders can utilize in order to be perceived as prototypical in their status, for instance, via manipulating their perceived height or vertical distance from followers. ...
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