Power really can corrupt people. Here’s what to do about it

I discovered this article in the print edition of New Scientist

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2152831-power-really-can-corrupt-people-heres-what-to-do-about-it/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=news&campaign_id=RSS%7CNSNS-news

By James Bloodworth
Nov. 9, 2017

Over recent weeks, the UK parliament has been beset by accusations about powerful men sexually harassing female MPs, journalists and party activists.

Those revelations followed hard on the heels of similar claims levelled against big names in Hollywood. Most recently, the leak of financial documents known as the “Paradise Papers” exposed a network of tax-avoidance schemes used by the world’s super-rich and famous.

A cascade of damning revelations about those in positions of authority, high-level instances of sleaze, avariciousness and dishonesty is hardly new of course. In 1887, the historian Lord Acton famously wrote: “Power tends to corrupt…”

This latest clutch of scandals seems another depressing example of the apparent connection between unethical behaviour and the holding of power. What is the truth about that relationship?
Unleash the beast

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A 2012 study found that power simply exacerbated pre-existing ethical tendencies. When a participant thought of themselves as compassionate, fair and generous, granting them perceived power resulted in them making more community-centred choices.

“Power isn’t corrupting; it’s freeing,” Joe Magee, a power researcher and professor of management at New York University, recently told The Atlantic. “What power does is that it liberates the true self to emerge,” Magee added. In other words, power removes the social filter through which we tend to moderate our behaviour. A person who goes on to use power for corrupt ends was probably corrupt before he or she obtained power.

Part of the problem may be that the less altruistic are perhaps inclined to seek power more single-mindedly than more altruistic people.

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Power can corrupt; yet there is nothing inevitable about the process. Those currently being dragged over the coals for wrongdoing are being brought low by their own choices.

Power didn’t make them do it; but it may have led them to believe they could get away with it. The answer is not to do away with power, but to redouble efforts to ensure those at the top have no hiding place.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22250668

J Appl Psychol. 2012 May;97(3):681-9. doi: 10.1037/a0026811. Epub 2012 Jan 16.

Does power corrupt or enable? When and why power facilitates self-interested behavior.
DeCelles KA1, DeRue DS, Margolis JD, Ceranic TL.
Author information
Abstract

Does power corrupt a moral identity, or does it enable a moral identity to emerge? Drawing from the power literature, we propose that the psychological experience of power, although often associated with promoting self-interest, is associated with greater self-interest only in the presence of a weak moral identity. Furthermore, we propose that the psychological experience of power is associated with less self-interest in the presence of a strong moral identity. Across a field survey of working adults and in a lab experiment, individuals with a strong moral identity were less likely to act in self-interest, yet individuals with a weak moral identity were more likely to act in self-interest, when subjectively experiencing power. Finally, we predict and demonstrate an explanatory mechanism behind this effect: The psychological experience of power enhances moral awareness among those with a strong moral identity, yet decreases the moral awareness among those with a weak moral identity. In turn, individuals' moral awareness affects how they behave in relation to their self-interest.