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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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