Power corrupts, but it only corrupts those who think they deserve it. | Hacker News Reader

Power corrupts, but it only corrupts those who think they deserve it.

economist.com

55 pointscwan13 comments

This sounds like Douglas Adams' theory of power is being vindicated. In his Hitchhiker's "trilogy," Adams sets up a convoluted situation where the Universe is ruled by a humble "Old Man In A Shack" since people who want power are therefore unqualified to possess it.

Or Steinbeck's "The Short Reign of Pippen IV".

Plato says the same thing in The Republic

Would like to see a follow-up to see if the ones who are in power but do not think they deserve it eventually, or can be made to, come to think that they deserve their power.

Me too. I think it would complete the verification of Lord Acton's observation quite nicely.

Intuitively I think the final piece is obvious, but lots of things seem obvious and yet turn out not to be true.

I seriously doubt somebody would remain in a state of "hypercrisy" very long. It seems an uncomfortable and unnatural state of affairs.

At the point it becomes most interesting the author cops-out with a trite conclusion.

This speculation:

    Hypercrisy might thus be a signal of submissiveness—one
    that is exaggerated in creatures that feel themselves to
    be in the wrong place in the hierarchy. By applying
    reverse privileges to themselves, they hope to escape
    punishment from the real dominants.

.. steers further awry:

    Perhaps the lesson, then, is that corruption and
    hypocrisy are the price that societies pay for being
    led by alpha males (and, in some cases, alpha females).
    The alternative, though cleaner, is leadership by wimps.

For those interested, the model for austere leadership is Cincinnatus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus

The experiment is fascinating, but the author draws too strong of a conclusion: first, the "I didn't deserve it" powerful could exhibit 'hypercrisy' for other reasons, including the old saw "to those who are given much, much is asked in return". I mean, let's not get too cynical here. Second, even if on average the "I deserved it" powerful are hypocritical, that doesn't mean that all of them are; it just means we have to look more carefully for the outliers.

That's quite horrible.

That means that people of power consists of two groups. First group built of individuals thinking they deserve power, who take much for themselves illegally and other group of individuals thinking that they do not deserve the power, who perceive immoral actions of the people from first group less immoral then they actually are.

The two groups were constructed for the experiment, to emphasize the difference. If you're saying that powerful people in the real world are divided into two groups, that is your own opinion, not something that the study concluded.

A person in power either feels entitled to his power or he does not. Are there any other options? I can't really think of any, and if there are not then persons in power are either divided into the two groups, or all persons in power belong to one of the groups. I think it is highly unlikely that all persons in power would belong to the same group, but perhaps some condition for reaching a position of power prevents you from belonging to one of the groups.

I don't have any answers, but found it too interesting not say anything.

Yes. I was reporting realization that came to me after reading this, not the results of the research. My opinion is of course simplified (there might for example be a third group of people in power that don't have opinion on whether they deserve that power or not who behave like rest of general population and judge morality of acts closer to average judgment).

What struck me that part of people who have power, those who have high moral standards for themselves (possibly induced by feeling that their power is undeserved) might tend to overlook immoral actions of their peers just because of some glitch in our biology.

So what they are saying is rather that "power attracts the already corrupt" you just don't get to see their true colors until they are in power.

Your stereotypical abusive politician is typically someone who has been a nasty piece of work since childhood, they were just powerless to act on it until some suckers voted them into office.

I think this is an inherent problem with any social system that encourages a "one up/one down" mentality. I suspect the antidote is to promote a culture where all people are treated with equal respect, which isn't easy to do at all.

One problem that I have witnessed is that "nice" leadership tends to get disrespected and abused. When my kids were younger, at one point I spelled it out clearly for them that if they didn't quit being pains in the butt, the nice mommy they were taking for granted could disappear (along with a great many privileges they took for granted) and be replaced by an evil mommy. I choose to be nice because I prefer it, not because I don't know how to be awful. My kids stopped taking me so much for granted and stopped assuming that I was some kind of doormat.

As an example with adults, I currently participate in an online forum where the moderator is sometimes viciously attacked. The attackers then justify their attacks by saying things like "She must not mind. If she did, she could remove me." Things improved after I got after the attackers and then, when someone suggested the moderator could leave, stated publicly that "Maybe it is lost on you that she is the moderator and the only reason her attackers can remain is because she is a great deal more tolerant than they are." The entire tone of the forum changed.

As long as most people are so generally disrespectful and so willing to take good things for granted, "corrupt" leaders may be the only kind who can survive.

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