Drawing inferences about other people's thoughts and feelings related to power issues (‘power-relevant' thoughts and feelings) can affect how hierarchies are formed. Perceivers who infer such thoughts and feelings can be biased (i.e., over- or underestimating the occurrence of power-relevant thoughts and feelings). We investigated whether the perceiver's gender and the perceiver's preference for a high or low power position (‘power preference') affects the perceiver's bias toward attributing power-relevant thoughts and feelings to others. Participants were 80 female and 35 male students who indicated their power preference and then guessed whether videotaped target individuals had experienced power-relevant thoughts and feelings or not. Using a signal detection approach, we found that men who preferred a high power position overestimated the occurrence of power-relevant thoughts and feelings in others more than men who preferred a low power position. No such difference in overestimation bias was found for women. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.