English historian and politician Lord Acton famously said "Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." But how true
is that?
Hey guys, Julia here for DNews.
One of the classic examples of twisted psychology is the brutal 1971 Stanford prison experiment.
Hand a bunch of regular college age guys power without reservations and things turn very
dark, very quickly. But what was it about being given power that changed these young
men so fast? Does power really corrupt? Or is it in human nature to dominate completely
when in a position of privilege?
Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley, believes
that empathy and social intelligence have been shown to be important in acquiring power,
but these skills seem to be the first to go when actually in a position of power. This
is called the Power Paradox.
Keltner’s research shows that when in groups, humans tend to promote socially intelligent
and empathetic people to positions of power. That we’re actually wary of people who seem
too self-serving and opportunistic. So we’re pretty good at spying who is unfit for power,
and tend to rally around someone who does want what’s best for the group. Unfortunately
once that person is given power… things seem to go a little wrong.
Some wonder, does power corrupt? Or do the corrupt seek power? It’s more the former
according to a study in the journal Leadership Quality. Researchers analyzed people’s potential
for corruption by judging some of their personality traits, like honesty. Then through a series
of experiments gave people varying degrees of power over dividing up an amount of money.
The people in positions of higher power tended to make more anti-social choices than those
in a lower position of power. Even though beforehand everyone agreed that the prosocial
choices were the best. But what’s interesting in this study, is that the researchers, in
one of the experiments, introduced a time crunch. When under pressure from time, even
the more “honest” participants fell down a more corrupt path.
And it’s not just the top dogs that are corrupt. People stuck in the middle can act
horribly too. So think of like a prison guard, they have almost no status, but a lot of power.
Because of this, according to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
guards are much more likely to act corruptly. To test this researchers assigned students
to either a high status title “idea producer” or a low status title “worker”.
The students then told other students to perform from a list of ten tasks. Some were pretty
demeaning like "bark like a dog three times." They found, students in low status roles were
more likely to make their fellow participants do the more demeaning tasks.
Concluding that being in a low status position, just makes us feel bad about ourselves, but
controlling someone else, helps alleviate some of those bad feelings.
So there does seem to be something about power that makes us behave in not the nicest of
ways. And it also goes to our heads. According to a study published at the journal Psychological
Science, found that people in power suffer from an illusion of control.
In a simple experiment the researchers assigned people into groups, some with high power positions
such as “manager”. Then they were asked to predict the outcome of rolling a pair of
dice. But when confronted with the option to roll the dice themselves or let someone
else do it, every single person in the high power group wanted to roll the dice themselves
compared to less than 70% of people in lower positions. Basically they believed they could
control the outcome of something, even something as random as a roll of a dice.
While the roll of a dice isn’t that big of a deal, such a mindset could have huge
implications for life and death matters, like the outcome of corporate merger or war.
and according to another study also published in the journal Psychological Science, people
in positions of power tend to overestimate their own height! People who feel powerful…
literally feel taller!
So, what should we do as a society? Well, authors from the study in Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology said "find ways for all individuals, regardless of the status of their
roles, to feel respected and valued,” because "…respect assuages negative feelings about
their low-status roles and leads them to treat others positively."
and the authors of the Leadership Quality study say it’s more simple than that, "Organisations
should limit how much leaders can drink from the seductive chalice of power."
So how do you think you would behave if you had power?
So maybe Abraham Lincoln was right when he said “Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
So it begs the question according the authors of the study, “Can feeling powerful make
leaders less able to feel empathy and relate to the "little people" because they literally
feel bigger?”