
Over time, leaders lose mental capacities - prostoalex
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/?single_page=true
======
goofingaround
The research does not support this article (surprise).

\- The researchers primed subjects on "power" by having the subject write an
essay about a high, neutral, or low power situation. It's not clear that the
intervention maps to what the article calls power.

\- The researchers did not find statistically significant differences between
the low power group and the neutral group. They also did not find significant
differences between the neutral group and the high power group. If the neutral
group varied this much, are we tracking meaningful differences?

\- Is reduced mirroring "damage"? Is reduced mirroring necessarily
undesirable? We have no idea.

[https://www.oveo.org/fichiers/power-changes-how-the-brain-
re...](https://www.oveo.org/fichiers/power-changes-how-the-brain-responds-to-
others.pdf)

~~~
joe_the_user
For good or ill, this article isn't based on single paper but a range of
papers from a group of authors.

It's still legitimate to critique the approach but I don't think you can
simply pick apart a single paper to do that.

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crucini
The article seems biased: it pathologizes power. However our ability to adapt
to social role is probably an important asset. Most likely the changes they
measured are good for the group's survival. A leader should not be seeking
approval as much as a commoner. Maybe the problem is that we've violated some
unstated "design assumptions" of our tribes. As for this CEO who got hauled
before Congress - a blank affect sounds like the right approach. It's just a
ritual for politicians to show off for the cameras, but expressing contempt
(as Shkreli did) is dangerous.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
I'm not sure what relation pathologizing power has with bias? I'm also not
sure that losing your empathizing ability when in power is any more adaptive
than any physical sort of atrophy is adaptive when bedridden. When you're
powerful you don't have to exercise the empathizing muscle and so (many)
leaders don't. But they should in the same way that I should go and exercise
my physical muscles even though I don't have to.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Muscular atrophy is definitely adaptive as an anti-starvation tool. Don't need
that particular muscle? Lose the muscle and become more calorie-efficient. And
you get some free caloric energy out of consuming the muscle at the same time.

~~~
joe_the_user
Muscular atrophy certainly is the result of adaption over time. Pissing your
pants when you get scared enough is also a product of adaptation. But neither
is particularly convenient for a modern human today, which is clearly the
actual point of the post above.

Reflexive lack of empathy for people in proportion to the degree you have
power over them may be a logical product of the evolution of the human
organism. But it might not be something a democratic society benefits from in
its leaders, to bring thing back to the topic.

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fallingfrog
This is a standard part of feminist theory- basically the idea is that people
with no power spend a lot of time wondering what powerful people think, so
they tend to have a good understanding of what powerful people think. But
people in a privileged position don't really have any need to think about what
less powerful people think- so they don't do it. And that's where you get the
trope of women being mysterious creatures, whereas women seem to understand
men perfectly. The same logic applies to bosses and workers.

~~~
d33
That's a really cool theory, but you're also stirring up the hornets' nest by
bringing it up anywhere in tech environment, which got really feministic
recently. BTW, one thing doesn't seem to stick: they don't label themselves as
less powerful - in fact, their misandric agenda keeps trying to repeat the
opposite.

I personally believe that the "mysterious creature" concept stems from women
being more emotional and thus more difficult to analyse - we seem to have more
scientific grounds for logic, whereas we still hadn't even agreed what an
emotion is.

~~~
anon808
'I personally believe that the "mysterious creature" concept stems from women
being more emotional'

Why do you think women (as a gender) are more emotional?

~~~
gkya
I really get a cringe when people act as if their ideals are reality when they
are just ideals in their heads. Good morning: a great majority of the world
lives traditional lifestyles in patriarchal societies, and even in the "best"
parts the gender disparity in responsibilities and rights continues, and the
stereotypes are true to some extent for most of them too.

I dislike feminism per se as I see it to be just another sexism and not a step
towards gender equality, as it tends to cause sexual etichette becoming more
visual and everything having gender associations, and comes with detrimental
practices like positive discrimination and extension of gender equality into
non gender-related parts of life. And in tech these are so much amplified.

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andai
I can't access the research, but I was wondering if they tested on mostly men
or if there was a decent size female group as well, and if they found any
difference between men and women in this regard.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
If men were more susceptible in a statistically significant way they would
have called it out at least as a "further research needed" because it opens
the door for future resource allocation. If women were more susceptible in a
statistically significant way they wouldn't have framed the discussion so
negatively in terms of CEOs and world leaders but instead framed it as a
health issue because doing anything else in most academic settings is being
needlessly reckless and unprofessional.

Since there's no mention whatsoever I'm betting there was no meaningful
difference or the test group wasn't big enough to investigate the possibility
of said difference.

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r-u-k-m
This is a remarkably low-quality article, and the citations are horrendously
scattered throughout. This is much better, and clearer article (cited inside
the original) from 2009:

[https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/losing_touc...](https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/losing_touch)

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joaofs
I wonder if this is a common feature of leaders rather than a degenerative
disease. Very competitive environments make way for sociopaths to get up to
the top more frequently than normal people.

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mmaunder
When you're leading a team or doing public speaking and just starting out, one
of the challenges is that you second guess yourself terribly after you have
chatted to the group. I think empathy is part of the cause - you see yourself
(and what a complete idiot your are) from the perspective of each individual
in the group. It can be debilitating if you don't figure out how to stop
yourself from doing that. Part of that is turning off a certain amount of
empathy.

As others have pointed out, the article may be flawed. But I think the job of
leader calls for reduced empathy or some way to control it and the second
guessing yourself that comes with it - and that is probably what the author
observed.

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jstewartmobile
I can vouch for it. When you're over people, they're never going to give you
their version of the unvarnished truth. You always get the PR-filtered
version. Stay in this scenario long enough, and it's very easy to start
actually believing the toadies.

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GhostVII
Becoming worse at empathy is not the same as brain damage, people loose
certain skills all the time if they are not exercised.

~~~
nostrebored
There is also evidence suggesting that empathy is a poor trait in
leaders/judges, are we are most probably to empathizing with people we find
relatable.

~~~
wavefunction
So you're saying CEOs have trouble relating to the average person? ;)

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senthil_rajasek
This article ends in a gloomy note, I fear it might even start normalizing
"asshole-ery".

I am reminded of a quote by Buffett or someone similar about more money
turning assholes into even bigger assholes meaning there is nothing wrong in
staying humble even after you become rich and powerful.

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jweir
Are the brain studies in this article subject to buggy and flawed fMRI
research?

[http://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-
inv...](http://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-invalidate-
decades-of-brain-research-scientists-discover)

edit: further reading [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-
brain/ignobe...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-
brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/)

~~~
r-u-k-m
No, they are not. None of these studies used FMRI; they were either
statistical or behavioral, with no neurological investigation. Did you read
the article?

From the article you linked:

"Some people like to use the salmon study as proof that fMRI is woo, but this
isn't the case, it's actually a study to show the importance of correcting
your stats."

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arthulia
It would seem some leaders are born this way.

I wonder how easily it can be passed to offspring (via nature or nurture).

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lasermike026
Andy Kaufman used to work as bus boy when he was famous and when people asked
him, "Are you Any Kaufman?" he would deny it. I wonder if doing things like
this is a good treatment.

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Houshalter
"Brain damage" is a rather extreme way of putting this. It's a slight decrease
in empathy. Which sounds bad, but makes perfect sense. Empathetic people make
terrible leaders. They get taken advantage of. They seek approval from others
instead of making what they think is the best decision. They have trouble
saying "no." They are indecisive when a decision is controversial and might
upset some people.

I know this because I _think_ I am an overly empathetic person, and I know I
make a terrible leader. Even watching shows like the West Wing stresses me out
a bit and I don't envy people who have to make hard decisions.

~~~
zepto
The downsides you speak of are not caused by being empathetic.

They are caused by not having developed skills in setting boundaries.

Being worried about upsetting people isn't a feature of empathy. It's a
feature of a lack of perspective.

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perseusprime11
Leaders don't but managers do lose their mental capacities.

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squozzer
I wonder if one could simulate the effects of power by having subjects play
Civilization?

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binthere
Article starts with jokes and it's hard for me to keep following as if it was
a serious research.

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fideloper
Shower thought: So does love.

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PeanutNore
I completely misunderstood the headline going in, expecting something to do
with the "current times voltage" sort of power and wondering what sort of
gruesome experiment electrocuting brains was going on.

~~~
jxramos
haha, that's what I thought too, some sort of EMF type research or something.

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Danihan
Mirroring = doing whatever others are doing / fitting in.

It makes sense that people in authoritative positions would not do this as
often.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_Mirroring = doing whatever others are doing / fitting in._

It's a natural guess, but no. Check out:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron)

~~~
Danihan
The article isn't talking about mirror neurons though.

It's referencing the section of the brain that is used for social mirroring, I
believe.

~~~
vilhelm_s
I think it is talking about mirror neurons. The article states

> Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University, in Ontario, [...]
> found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,”
> that may be a cornerstone of empathy.

This paper this refers to is [https://www.oveo.org/fichiers/power-changes-how-
the-brain-re...](https://www.oveo.org/fichiers/power-changes-how-the-brain-
responds-to-others.pdf) , which states

> with respect to action observation, neural circuits that are related to
> action execution become active when the person observes someone else making
> the same action; in other words, the observer’s brain resonates with the
> model’s motor behavior. We refer to the network of brain regions involved in
> this process as the motor resonance system. Motor resonance includes the
> human parietofrontal mirror system, and many believe that resonance reflects
> mirror system activity. [...] Researchers suggest that motor resonance
> provides a scaffold for understanding the actions of our interaction
> partners, and those actions are frequently less important to those with
> high-power status. [...] In the present study, we examine whether power can
> increase or decrease interpersonal sensitivity by examining the effects of
> power priming on motor resonance.

The parietofrontal mirror system is the classic set of mirror neurons which
were first identified in monkeys.

