4 ms·

The paradox of power

67 points by grellas 16y ago

scott_s 16y ago
The experiment with drawing the letter 'E' on their foreheads seems like a huge leap to me. Some people who don't do spatial reasoning on a daily basis might not be able to even determine which way the letter should be drawn so that others could read it. My first instinct was to draw the letter so it was backwards to other people, but it would appear correctly in a mirror - because, I think, anytime I do something to my face, I'm looking in a mirror.
- barrkel 16y ago
  I would strongly expect that for the experiment to have any validity at all, the people in the group primed with feelings of power would be selected randomly. I don't see the connection with a propensity for being selected randomly, and a lack of skill with spacial reasoning.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    My point: I think I have pretty good spatial reasoning capabilities, and it took a few seconds of thinking to figure out which way I should draw the letter on my own head for other people to read it. If I had to use reasoning - that is, rational thought - then I doubt their claim that people who were subconsciously thinking of their own power would also subconsciously draw the letter so it was easier for them to read.
CodeMage 16y ago
I'm not a psychologists (or anything related), but it seems to me that the article is based on flawed reasoning. First it presents studies that demonstrate how "people give authority to people that they genuinely like", then they wonder why "when you give people power, they basically start acting like fools." The subtle flaw here is the assumption is that people are given power in the same democratic way as in those studies. When we have any power to hand over directly -- and the inclination to hand it over -- we will tend to hand it over to someone we like, true. But people like the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard didn't rise to power just because someone said "Oh, here's a likable fellow, give him more power."
- drblast 16y ago
  Exactly; people in power, especially in large organizations, are very nearly a self-selecting group. In the military, for example, to make it to the upper levels, you have to make a conscious choice not to retire after 20 years and instead continue to play the game. The type of person who continues to work in those circumstances are the ones who do it to gain power or prestige. That's an obvious choice in the military, but it exists in large organizations everywhere; do I work longer hours and play the office politics so I can rise to the top, or do I go home at 5?
boredguy8 16y ago
This is such a one-dimensional piece of hoo-ha. I'm going to mostly skip the obvious reasons why a person with years of legal reasoning already 'on the books' might become less nuanced as they get older. Looking in the wrong place "Another study conducted by Mr. Keltner and Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business, measured "Machiavellian" tendencies, such as the willingness to spread malicious gossip, in a group of sorority sisters. It turned out that the Machiavellian sorority members were quickly identified by the group and isolated. Nobody liked them, and so they never became powerful." This ignores, of course, what just about anyone has realized from the time people realized they were realizing things: the best devious people are able to be devious while being thought to be good. The gossip is quickly excluded because nobody likes a gossip. But beware the gossip that nobody even realizes is a gossip, who spreads their news by craft and artifice (perhaps without realizing it). They often spread gossip by rallying people to 'help' where their help isn't wanted and doesn't belong. Yet, because they're ostensibly being 'nice', it can be hard to object. More practically in our domain: There are people who are good at noticing why things can fail. This isn't a particularly novel skill. Yet in some organizations, they're applauded from saving the group from disasters that were certainly around the corner! This is a devastatingly bad way to approach problems, and prevents progress. Yet it's easy to applaud because A) people like to be afraid; B) You only have to be right once to get to say 'I told you so' forever. Much better is the person that can deliver. But of course, this is more risky: building new things risks mistakes, yet also can have opportunity. But note how quickly does the work of releasing several new products get ignored when one of them is a problem child. Mini-tangent aside: You don't want to look at people who everyone thinks is devious and see if they succeed. You want to find people who are devious but hide it, and see if they succeed. My bet: they do. They just can't hide it forever. Selection Bias This article also fails to account for the selection bias at play. Are executives more likely to cheat, lie, or injure others? Or is word about their lying, cheating, and injurious behavior simply both more likely to be talked about and also more wide-reaching in impact? Sally in accounting cheating on her husband isn't likely to attract as much notice as Susan the CEO. And if Bob's stealing $100 in supplies a month, how does that compare to Barry stealing $100,000 as the COO? The fact is that such corruptions are more interesting because they make for a better story, for some definition of 'better' including "fall from power" and "the powerful are like us". (There may also be a factor at play where a person with power never gets told 'no'. I can think of celebrities where people 'latch on' for the ride, and won't ever say anything corrective or actually helpful to the person, because to do so risks the free lunch. The crash and burn can be painful.)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
zeteo 16y ago
"Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. [...] That may not be the best advice." Ummm... Just to make it clear, as anyone who has read his book knows, Machiavelli was talking Renaissance princes and the ambitious goal of unifying Italy (400 years before it was done). His argument was that, in the treacherous and volatile atmosphere of the day, love would evaporate soon, and the ruling prince might find his subjects turning against him unexpectedly - unless they feared him. It was advice meant to keep rebellions away, not to help his popularity. What exactly do college dorms and sororities have in common with this?!
napierzaza 16y ago
The best explanation in regards to why my boss, and everyone here's boss, is a jerk: They attribute your failures to flaws and their own failures to circumstance or whatever life context they're in. So if they're tired or had a bad night at home, they know why they started yelling. So basically it's basic solipsism or narcissism. They don't empathize with other people failures or mistakes and don't accept excuses for anyone but themselves. The preceding was an anecdote.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  Among the list of "improvements" that I would choose for the human cognitive architecture, very high up would be a little extra test before any thought is committed to belief or sentence is uttered aloud. Just a little addition to the mental flowchart... "is this thought a result of the fundamental attribution error? If no, proceed. If yes, rethink." [1] We really, really need our stories and myths to teach this out of us more as children. Maybe a little rhyme or something. [1] "actor-observer bias" to be more accurate and general, but I like the inclusion of the term "error".
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    We should probably also explain our existing child hood stories a little better. For example, when I heard "the boy who cried wolf" it was basically explained as "don't waste people's time". When I tell it to my kids I use it to explain credibility and how people react to it, and as an example of a logical fallacy (just because the boy was a liar doesn't mean what he says is always a lie).
edanm 16y ago
Honestly, all these Psychological studies always seem amazingly irrelevant to me. I'm no Psychologist, so I could be totally wrong, but I think comparing the actions of CEOs to the experiments described here done with College dorms and ranked popularity is a huge leap. Not to mention that the experiment described with drawing an E on your forehead seemed absurd to me. It seems like the explanation for it (power going to your head) was totally ad-hoced in.
gthank 16y ago
What amazes me is that this is presented as somehow novel. Quotes about power corrupting have been floating around for 100s of years. The most famous, "…absolute power corrupts absolutely", is from 1887 (see http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.html http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.html), but similar quotes go back to at least 1770.

67 points by grellas 16y ago

The experiment with drawing the letter 'E' on their foreheads seems like a huge leap to me. Some people who don't do spatial reasoning on a daily basis might not be able to even determine which way the letter should be drawn so that others could read it. My first instinct was to draw the letter so it was backwards to other people, but it would appear correctly in a mirror - because, I think, anytime I do something to my face, I'm looking in a mirror.

barrkel 16y ago
I would strongly expect that for the experiment to have any validity at all, the people in the group primed with feelings of power would be selected randomly. I don't see the connection with a propensity for being selected randomly, and a lack of skill with spacial reasoning.
- scott_s 16y ago
  My point: I think I have pretty good spatial reasoning capabilities, and it took a few seconds of thinking to figure out which way I should draw the letter on my own head for other people to read it. If I had to use reasoning - that is, rational thought - then I doubt their claim that people who were subconsciously thinking of their own power would also subconsciously draw the letter so it was easier for them to read.

CodeMage 16y ago

I'm not a psychologists (or anything related), but it seems to me that the article is based on flawed reasoning. First it presents studies that demonstrate how "people give authority to people that they genuinely like", then they wonder why "when you give people power, they basically start acting like fools." The subtle flaw here is the assumption is that people are given power in the same democratic way as in those studies. When we have any power to hand over directly -- and the inclination to hand it over -- we will tend to hand it over to someone we like, true. But people like the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard didn't rise to power just because someone said "Oh, here's a likable fellow, give him more power."

drblast 16y ago
Exactly; people in power, especially in large organizations, are very nearly a self-selecting group. In the military, for example, to make it to the upper levels, you have to make a conscious choice not to retire after 20 years and instead continue to play the game. The type of person who continues to work in those circumstances are the ones who do it to gain power or prestige. That's an obvious choice in the military, but it exists in large organizations everywhere; do I work longer hours and play the office politics so I can rise to the top, or do I go home at 5?

boredguy8 16y ago

This is such a one-dimensional piece of hoo-ha. I'm going to mostly skip the obvious reasons why a person with years of legal reasoning already 'on the books' might become less nuanced as they get older. Looking in the wrong place "Another study conducted by Mr. Keltner and Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business, measured "Machiavellian" tendencies, such as the willingness to spread malicious gossip, in a group of sorority sisters. It turned out that the Machiavellian sorority members were quickly identified by the group and isolated. Nobody liked them, and so they never became powerful." This ignores, of course, what just about anyone has realized from the time people realized they were realizing things: the best devious people are able to be devious while being thought to be good. The gossip is quickly excluded because nobody likes a gossip. But beware the gossip that nobody even realizes is a gossip, who spreads their news by craft and artifice (perhaps without realizing it). They often spread gossip by rallying people to 'help' where their help isn't wanted and doesn't belong. Yet, because they're ostensibly being 'nice', it can be hard to object. More practically in our domain: There are people who are good at noticing why things can fail. This isn't a particularly novel skill. Yet in some organizations, they're applauded from saving the group from disasters that were certainly around the corner! This is a devastatingly bad way to approach problems, and prevents progress. Yet it's easy to applaud because A) people like to be afraid; B) You only have to be right once to get to say 'I told you so' forever. Much better is the person that can deliver. But of course, this is more risky: building new things risks mistakes, yet also can have opportunity. But note how quickly does the work of releasing several new products get ignored when one of them is a problem child. Mini-tangent aside: You don't want to look at people who everyone thinks is devious and see if they succeed. You want to find people who are devious but hide it, and see if they succeed. My bet: they do. They just can't hide it forever. Selection Bias This article also fails to account for the selection bias at play. Are executives more likely to cheat, lie, or injure others? Or is word about their lying, cheating, and injurious behavior simply both more likely to be talked about and also more wide-reaching in impact? Sally in accounting cheating on her husband isn't likely to attract as much notice as Susan the CEO. And if Bob's stealing $100 in supplies a month, how does that compare to Barry stealing $100,000 as the COO? The fact is that such corruptions are more interesting because they make for a better story, for some definition of 'better' including "fall from power" and "the powerful are like us". (There may also be a factor at play where a person with power never gets told 'no'. I can think of celebrities where people 'latch on' for the ride, and won't ever say anything corrective or actually helpful to the person, because to do so risks the free lunch. The crash and burn can be painful.)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

zeteo 16y ago

"Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. [...] That may not be the best advice." Ummm... Just to make it clear, as anyone who has read his book knows, Machiavelli was talking Renaissance princes and the ambitious goal of unifying Italy (400 years before it was done). His argument was that, in the treacherous and volatile atmosphere of the day, love would evaporate soon, and the ruling prince might find his subjects turning against him unexpectedly - unless they feared him. It was advice meant to keep rebellions away, not to help his popularity. What exactly do college dorms and sororities have in common with this?!

napierzaza 16y ago

The best explanation in regards to why my boss, and everyone here's boss, is a jerk: They attribute your failures to flaws and their own failures to circumstance or whatever life context they're in. So if they're tired or had a bad night at home, they know why they started yelling. So basically it's basic solipsism or narcissism. They don't empathize with other people failures or mistakes and don't accept excuses for anyone but themselves. The preceding was an anecdote.

nooneelse 16y ago
Among the list of "improvements" that I would choose for the human cognitive architecture, very high up would be a little extra test before any thought is committed to belief or sentence is uttered aloud. Just a little addition to the mental flowchart... "is this thought a result of the fundamental attribution error? If no, proceed. If yes, rethink." [1] We really, really need our stories and myths to teach this out of us more as children. Maybe a little rhyme or something. [1] "actor-observer bias" to be more accurate and general, but I like the inclusion of the term "error".
- loewenskind 16y ago
  We should probably also explain our existing child hood stories a little better. For example, when I heard "the boy who cried wolf" it was basically explained as "don't waste people's time". When I tell it to my kids I use it to explain credibility and how people react to it, and as an example of a logical fallacy (just because the boy was a liar doesn't mean what he says is always a lie).

edanm 16y ago

Honestly, all these Psychological studies always seem amazingly irrelevant to me. I'm no Psychologist, so I could be totally wrong, but I think comparing the actions of CEOs to the experiments described here done with College dorms and ranked popularity is a huge leap. Not to mention that the experiment described with drawing an E on your forehead seemed absurd to me. It seems like the explanation for it (power going to your head) was totally ad-hoced in.

gthank 16y ago

What amazes me is that this is presented as somehow novel. Quotes about power corrupting have been floating around for 100s of years. The most famous, "…absolute power corrupts absolutely", is from 1887 (see http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.html http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.html), but similar quotes go back to at least 1770.