
When Power Goes to Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart (2013) - vezycash
https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain?ft=1&f=1007
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hliyan
This was the highlight for me:

 _It turns out, feeling powerless boosted the mirror system — people
empathized highly. But, Obhi says, "when people were feeling powerful, the
signal wasn't very high at all."_

From an evolutionary point of view, one can argue that individuals with less
power need to seek collective advantages more than those with higher degrees
of power. Empathy enables collective benefits.

~~~
scotty79
The question is if empathy is just unnecessary or is it actively harmful for
people with power. Does that part of the brain shut down as a simple energy
saving measure because it's not necessary or is it actively suppressed because
keeping it active would be harmful for individual and his genetic relatives or
even the people he has power over?

~~~
hliyan
Possibly the latter. I haven't heard of the brain resorting to such energy
saving measures.

I have another (unsubstantiated) theory too: there is a group advantage in
those with power having reduced empathy. Individuals in leadership positions
will need to direct the group in such ways that are beneficial to the group
overall, but may be harmful to specific individuals. Leaders with high degrees
of empathy might find this difficult. This is probably why the Myers-Briggs
type "ENTJ" (often associated with leaders) is jokingly summarized as "I'm
very sorry, but you have to die." [1]

[1]
[https://www.librarything.com/topic/20927](https://www.librarything.com/topic/20927)

~~~
scotty79
Brain has incredible energy saving measures. When you look through your eyes
you process just few percent of the image. The rest is pretty much ignored
because it usually isn't necessary for anything.

When you are trying to think through something it's really hard and tiresome
not to default to stereotypes and what you already figured out earlier about
similar thing.

Basically brain is as lazy as it can get away with.

------
LarryL
> So when people felt power, they really did have more trouble getting inside
> another person's head.

Interesting research, I'll be curious to know if it gets confirmed.

Anyway, I can offer a REAL, striking example of how people can change once
power "goes to their head".

This is a real story, I was there when it happened, I saw & heard all, I was
sitting about one meter away...

This took place in the early 2000s, I was working, as a contractor, in a BIG
company. In the room we were several contractors, working for several teams
(with different bosses). One of my coworkers was a political refugee in
France, he was a political activist at home (an african country under a
dictature) and had to flee, so he went to France. I knew he was into politics
because during pauses he would talk on his phone and take appointments & the
like (I was sitting in front of him, so I heard part of it).

One morning, as I arrived (he was usually the first in the room), he told me
that something bad had happened... His teenage daughter was supposed to come
and visit him in France (his family was still living in Africa), but at the
airport she had been arrested by the police and had _disappeared_ with no
news...

I don't think I need to insist on the seriousness of the situation & the fears
that he must have had. Police in dictatorships are not know for being nice...
You can easily imagine what could have happened to her.

Of course, this had been done in order to put pressure on him.

Then his boss entered the room, to talk about their project.

(Now, I swear that everything is 100% true and not exaggerated.) My coworked
started, again, to explain the abduction of his daughter to his boss. His
-loud- boss's reaction, with half a chuckle: "Ha! you're a man who brings
trouble!". Then he left the room.

I was speechless. To be perfectly clear, this was NOT a "defensive laugh", the
type of laugh that you do when things are bad and you don't know how to react,
no he REALLY did not care.

My coworker, dismayed, turned to me and said "You know, that guy and me, we
used to be like fingers of the same hand. Since he became a manager, he's gone
crazy".

I could tell a lot of other horror stories about that manager. A few years
later he even cost me my job (I refused a contract that would have put me in
his team, this got me fired).

For those of you who may be wondering what happened to the daughter: her
family "bought" her back. Corruption goes both ways...

A sad example of how power can kill someone heart...

~~~
rootusrootus
I went from being an individual contributor to a manager, and I would
interpret that situation differently. When you are the boss, you are getting
bombarded constantly. From above, below, peers, you name it. Your cognitive
load goes up so much that you actively avoid bringing even more onto your
plate. I definitely found myself trying on-the-fly to keep interactions
superficial, especially in a group setting, just to avoid taking on yet
another burden onto my already full plate.

Perhaps that would mean I suck as a manager. Though honestly I've seen the
same effect on pretty much everyone I've seen go up the manager career path. I
don't take any of it personally.

There are two sizes of problems -- mine, and yours, and mine will always be
much more important to me.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> There are two sizes of problems -- mine, and yours

So if you drop a penny and I break my arm, you'd care more about the dropped
penny, and when I say "ouch" you say "not now, can't you see I just dropped a
penny"?

~~~
coldtea
Mel Brooks: "If I cut my finger, that's tragedy... Comedy is if you walk into
an open sewer and die."

~~~
paradoxparalax
Bitterness is always less bitter in someone else's mouth, pain seems to be
less painful too.

------
Theodores
Empathy is a learned skill, much like language, we are hard wired to be able
to do it but it has to be worked on and a lot of that work has to be done in
childhood.

A lot of people are not loved in childhood, this may be due to a poor or a
rich background. Being sent to boarding school far away from home or having a
single mum on crack can result in a child not learning about love. The result
is narcissism and those cursed with narcissism can do a convincing job when it
suits them of emulating empathy. They might care about those around them when
it means they have something to gain, but this is exploitative caring, not
what passes for normal emotion for most people who grew up with parents that
loved them.

Narcissists do love power and money. Therefore there is a tendency for them to
want to rule the world, be boss of the company or to acquire more wealth than
might make sense.

We all have a certain amount of narcissism in us, normally this is in check
and not a crippling disease, as per the seriously unloved-as-a-child brigade.
This study appeals to this innate narcissism, and, we can all be manipulated
into being 'good Germans' or 'Christian saints'.

There are many situations - e.g. being President - where mere mortals have no
interest in the job. To wear the crown and have the power naturally horrifies.
This does not mean we just want to be lead, but there is an aspect of this.

As a society we are generally good about making sure chronic alcoholics don't
rule the roost but we expect everyone to take part in a drink in social
situations. We can spot when someone likes the bottle a bit too much and deal
with it. Narcissism is a bit more tricky as the beyond-the-pale selfish
narcissist has the skills to feign empathy until they get the power they
crave. Then it is too late and we wonder how such a cruel, selfish person got
that way. Or maybe we are still under their spell and imagine they 'think like
us' and care.

For the benefit of humanity we need to have simple tests to identify those
with overly narcissistic tendencies and not let them into positions of power
such as being president. A 'breathalyser test' for the mind.

~~~
zozbot123
I mean, the thing about narcissism is that those with overly narcissistic
tendencies are not exactly hard to _spot_. There are only so many ways for a
person to be consistently self-aggrandizing, entitled, envious of others'
success, craving for universal _admiration_ even more so than power, etc. And
yes, "not letting those people be president, maybe?" is a good idea. It's also
really hard - the primary process especially, even more so than the general
election, rewards people who are committed to rallying the party base and
inspiring universal admiration from others, by any means necessary. We've seen
so many examples of that.

~~~
ppseafield
Plenty of narcissists fly below the radar. NPD is a spectrum, and individuals
fall on it in different degrees. What you imagine as a typical narcissist in
your comment is closer to an outlier than the average.

You can even find them in nonprofit, charity organizations where they use
their jobs to boost their social status. They use goodwill and greater than
average charisma to leverage friendships and create stalwart allies. Then they
stir up tension and controversy behind the scenes, and their friends come to
their defense, thus solidifying them as allies on the narcissist's side.

------
Regardsyjc
Could this explain why women may be considered more empathic or compassionate
considering gender imbalances across societies?

~~~
heavyset_go
Might make sense. I've noticed a trend where people who come from less
privileged backgrounds are more empathetic/compassionate, possibly from
experience or out of necessity, whereas their more wealthy/powerful
counterparts have the luxury of treating people however they please.

~~~
c3534l
I worked at a job where I loaded up people's cars and trucks and around 25% of
people tipped. I always found it funny how the more expensive the car, the
less likely they were to tip.

------
vezycash
How would we act if you're unarmed and I had a gun pointed at you?

We are all marketers, trying to achieve our goals - no matter how trivial.
Hence, we negotiate, flatter, smile even when we don't want to, try to know
what makes the other person tick. Problem is this method's slow, expensive and
inefficient (like American democracy).

BUT, when a person can compel action, things change. The brain takes the easy,
direct but less creative approach. Authorities become uncaring because they
don't need to. Problem is this method is efficient and cheap like Chinese
dictatorship.

I guess this topic becomes easier to reason out if it becomes a dictatorship
vs democracy, free market vs monopolies, and inbreeding vs diversity of ideas
debate.

------
Nomentatus
It may or may not be relevant, but the moment you become a manager, mirroring
becomes more painful: because there are some tradeoffs between people under
you that aren't going to be "win/win" all 'round, and you're the one who gets
to disappoint someone. I can see that for some bosses, the easiest thing is
just not to run the simulations at all; not to acknowledge too clearly that
you're (inevitably) causing disappointment. Not the right choice, but an easy
choice.

------
theonemind
I think the general idea that, in a democracy, the people keep the government
in check derives from this sort of thing. People with power can start behaving
differently/oddly. At a personal level, I usually try to keep these people in
check. But, that's something of a post-hoc justification, as they really just
rub me the wrong way and I call them out, question them, or do something
disobedient somewhat reflexively, and only sometimes catch myself in time to
control my reaction.

------
pmarreck
2013 though

~~~
zozbot123
Good catch. Notably, this is pre-replication crisis, and the evidence is kinda
underwhelming anyway for the claims that are being made. The theory that
increasing the salience of personal power makes experimental subjects less
empathetic could've been tested more directly than that. And as for a
practical application to things like fairness and pro-sociality, what we know
about e.g. the well-established literature on "Dictator" vs. "Ultimatum" games
strongly suggests that people in a position of power are only marginally less
pro-social/"fair" to others, if that.

~~~
wojcikstefan
> The theory that increasing the salience of personal power makes experimental
> subjects less empathetic could've been tested more directly than that.

How? (not challenging, just genuinely curious)

