Power does strange things to people. Psychology papers are littered with examples of people behaving awfully – even unlawfully – when they feel powerful or consider themselves to be high-status.
One famous paper, by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, reported the results of seven experiments that observed the behaviour of people with higher or lower power and social status. To summarise the findings: powerful people are the worst.
The team found that high-power individuals were more likely to lie during negotiations and cheat to increase their chances of winning a game. They were more likely to endorse unethical behaviour and even take sweets from a jar that they were told was meant for children in a lab next door.
The lead author of the paper is Prof Dacher Keltner, co-director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. He says there’s no shortage of evidence that power is a corruptive force.
“One of my favourite findings is that rich kids in the US are more likely to shoplift than poor kids,” he says.
