I'm not sure you can generalise as to better or worse chord progressions on psychological or neurological grounds. It depends on conditioning largely. We can end up with the self fulfilling prophecy where statistics find that the public buys more songs with a VI II V I progression (or whatever) than any other so we conclude that there must be a scientific basis for this. But it equally might be a case of the public wanting what the public always gets anyway.

Can you really want only what you always get? But maybe only because you have ears and a brain that recoil from anything unusual before it gets a chance to work on you.

Maybe we can say that for some moods or emotions we wish to convey that some progressions and devices are more apt and communicative of those emotions than others.

And as for the audience much is dependent on what we grew up with and what the "man in the street" is looking for music to reflect. The Power chords you mention as the word suggests convey 'toughness 'strength', a suggestion of something primeval or mighty, ominous or whatever adjective it evokes. The heavy metal genre which used them were breaking away from what were seen as emasculating blues-free tendencies towards romanticism and impressionism in rock/pop that didn't resonate with the experience of young guys growing up in a tough competitive working class environment. That's just one market though even if its a a large and enduring one

In the 60's and 70's musical genres cross-pollinated so much that people were exposed to a whole gamut of harmonic and rhythmic devices in a way that was hard for the music industry to control and replicate in a standardised manner with 'manufactured' artists who tow the company line.

in spite of attempts to suppress it, today we still We live in a time of genre-busting fusions of all music genres but for many that's anxiety provoking and they take refuge in an atavistic attitudes of 'authenticity', the known, tried and trusted. This means re-creating the past and not deviating from a gold standard of musical devices for each genre established at the style's inception or peak period of development.

This is manna to industry moguls of course who love anything retro and 'safe'. People are essentially hooked on nostalgia; certain songs they know and the styles they're played in. But one person's time-honoured stylistic device is another's time-worn cliche that no longer communicates. Music evolves as it's always done.

I favour music where style is not a consideration so much as the desire to break through listener expectations and directly communicate emotion with strong sound. Not necessarily easy on the ear sound either. If that means unusual rhythms harmonies and progressions or even none at all then so be it. If not then that's okay too.