Over time, leaders lose mental capacities | Hacker News Reader

Over time, leaders lose mental capacities

theatlantic.com

175 pointsprostoalex114 comments

The research does not support this article (surprise).

- The researchers primed subjects on "power" by having the subject write an essay about a high, neutral, or low power situation. It's not clear that the intervention maps to what the article calls power.

- The researchers did not find statistically significant differences between the low power group and the neutral group. They also did not find significant differences between the neutral group and the high power group. If the neutral group varied this much, are we tracking meaningful differences?

- Is reduced mirroring "damage"? Is reduced mirroring necessarily undesirable? We have no idea.

https://www.oveo.org/fichiers/power-changes-how-the-brain-re...

For good or ill, this article isn't based on single paper but a range of papers from a group of authors.

It's still legitimate to critique the approach but I don't think you can simply pick apart a single paper to do that.

The article seems biased: it pathologizes power. However our ability to adapt to social role is probably an important asset. Most likely the changes they measured are good for the group's survival. A leader should not be seeking approval as much as a commoner. Maybe the problem is that we've violated some unstated "design assumptions" of our tribes. As for this CEO who got hauled before Congress - a blank affect sounds like the right approach. It's just a ritual for politicians to show off for the cameras, but expressing contempt (as Shkreli did) is dangerous.

> Most likely the changes they measured are good for the group's survival.

Unless I've missed something it seems much more reasonable to assume that the changes they measure were good for the leader's reproductive success, historically. That's a very different thing though...

A potentially useful instinct that has exceeded its bounds of usefulness is still a pathology. Eating lots of food is useful when you don't know when your next meal is, but in a modern context it leads to obesity. In this case, or seems like the CEOs' performance objectively went down, do I don't see how that's "good for the group's survival" in 2017.

"The article seems biased: it pathologizes power."

Nope. It just claims power lessens people's capacity for empathy.

> Most likely the changes they measured are good for the group's survival

Why is that "most likely"?

I'm not sure what relation pathologizing power has with bias? I'm also not sure that losing your empathizing ability when in power is any more adaptive than any physical sort of atrophy is adaptive when bedridden. When you're powerful you don't have to exercise the empathizing muscle and so (many) leaders don't. But they should in the same way that I should go and exercise my physical muscles even though I don't have to.

Muscular atrophy is definitely adaptive as an anti-starvation tool. Don't need that particular muscle? Lose the muscle and become more calorie-efficient. And you get some free caloric energy out of consuming the muscle at the same time.

Muscular atrophy certainly is the result of adaption over time. Pissing your pants when you get scared enough is also a product of adaptation. But neither is particularly convenient for a modern human today, which is clearly the actual point of the post above.

Reflexive lack of empathy for people in proportion to the degree you have power over them may be a logical product of the evolution of the human organism. But it might not be something a democratic society benefits from in its leaders, to bring thing back to the topic.

They didn't mention seeking approval, they mentioned losing empathy. Those in power losing empathy for others is a big deal.

This is a standard part of feminist theory- basically the idea is that people with no power spend a lot of time wondering what powerful people think, so they tend to have a good understanding of what powerful people think. But people in a privileged position don't really have any need to think about what less powerful people think- so they don't do it. And that's where you get the trope of women being mysterious creatures, whereas women seem to understand men perfectly. The same logic applies to bosses and workers.

>whereas women seem to understand men perfectly.

Ummmmm, this has not been my experience at all. Women seem as perplexed by men as the other way around. Believing you understand how someone works and thinks is not the same thing as actually understanding how someone works and thinks.

Besides being wrong (just do a google search for "how can I understand men") I find this part of feminist theory to be incredibly sexist.

EDIT: Also, if women did understand men perfectly you would think they would have absolutely no problem getting exactly what they want from men. If I understood someone perfectly, I would absolutely know the best ways to manipulate them. If your statement is true, the fact that women are still unequal in some respects (seats in the boardroom/more opportunity to improve career/etc) would probably mean that women don't want the opportunities they claim they do. After all, if they understood men as well as you claim they would have no problem extracting those opportunities.

If you can't get someone to do what you want, you definitely do not understand them perfectly by any stretch of the terms.

I don't know why, but the comment I originally replied to really bothered me and I thought of a simpler example.

If women understood men perfectly, there wouldn't be so many examples of classic male-female miscommunication. AskReddit threads are a testament to this. Take person A who only speaks Chinese and person B who speaks English as a first language as well as perfect Chinese. For some reason they often have misunderstandings, why would this be? Probably because person B doesn't speak Chinese as well as they think.

Sorry but this still bothers me. I'm not going to wade into the gender war so let me put it this way: we are also 'different' in other ways, so misunderstanding is generally not just down to one factor. So is it right to just simplify the attribution to male-female differences? Normal vs neurotypicals. Secular vs religious. White vs non-white. East vs West. Old vs young. Urban vs country. And so on it goes, plus the greys in between, and life experiences and assumptions and beliefs. Every person has a unique combination of these factors, creating a very grey (or colourful if you like) identity.

Then combine this with the time, place and mood the misunderstanding occurred in. Then you will realise that it's too fuzzy to just put it down to a factor such as gender differences ... so what to do? Simples: try not to judge, because at best it is inaccurate and at worse it feeds into the prejudice. It would be far more helpful to take the benefit of doubt while being honest and empathic, because that's the only way the two parties can meet at the centre. If one party refuses to budge, then perhaps just give in! Victories are ultimately a bit petty.

By the way, please don't take this as a holier-than-thou speech, and I'm not condemning you for being so 'simple'. The reality is that all of us are like this, because it's so deeply ingrained and easy, a shortcut in our search for explanation. But for the sake of peace, we can definitely try to rise above it. Honesty and empathy - without the tree-hugging tone.

> if women did understand men perfectly you would think they would have absolutely no problem getting exactly what they want from men

While I agree with the gist of your comment, this is not true. I perfectly understand how roulette works - yet it doesn't help me win. (Unless you're using a very literal meaning of the word "perfectly", like in some laplacian determinism sense.) In fact, we can get all sorts of interesting (probabilistic) understanding about the world, which doesn't provide any information to help us decide.

You might start by figuring out if this is really a part of "feminist theory" -- from the use of the word "seem", I don't think it is. If you're going to criticize someone, criticize what they actually say, rather than what they "seem" to think.

As an example: it's been frequently claimed that feminists hate men, but not because a lot of feminists say that they hate men.

> people with no power spend a lot of time wondering what powerful people think

While this sounds "obvious", I don't think that someone in financial or personal trouble is spending a lot of time philosophising about what rich people are thinking. They're more likely focused on their problems at hand. But even if I grant you that ...

> so they tend to have a good understanding of what powerful people think

... How does that logically follow from the first statement? Just because someone spends a lot of time thinking about something doesn't mean that they're correct in their conclusions. Conspiracy theorists spend an insane amount of time thinking about what "the powers that be" are thinking about. Does that mean they're correct in their conclusions? No, their conclusions are tainted by their own biases.

> And that's where you get the trope of women being mysterious creatures, whereas women seem to understand men perfectly.

Assuming the trope was actually accurate, how do you explain that powerful women also have the same trait? Why don't very poor men understand women perfectly? It's almost as though evolutionary psychology plays a role, rather than this less-power-makes-you-more-empathetic model.

Also, I don't understand how this isn't a sexist view, saying that "women understand men incredibly well because they spend a lot of time thinking about men, while men don't spend nearly as much time thinking about women."

> The same logic applies to bosses and workers.

Do you honestly think that workers understand bosses better than bosses understand workers? I find that generally both groups misunderstand each other in equal quantities. Also arguably bosses might understand workers better because most bosses have been workers but most workers haven't been bosses.

Well,

Unlimited power may cause some lack of capacity but it's worth keeping in mind that extreme powerlessness may also create actual neurological problems also - see the learned helplessness hypothesis [1]. Of course this doesn't take away from the point that equal relations are probably the most healthy - even on a neurological level. But it makes who really understands who a bit more complicated a question.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

> This is a standard part of feminist theory- basically the idea is that people with no power spend a lot of time wondering what powerful people think, so they tend to have a good understanding of what powerful people think.

Can you provide any sources for this in feminist theory? Because I've never previously encountered it, and I'd genuinely like to know more about how it fits with other bits of feminist theory if it really is a standard (or even common) element.

> And that's where you get the trope of women being mysterious creatures, whereas women seem to understand men perfectly.

No, that trope predates feminist theory by many millenia, it is not a product of it.

The theory explains the trope.

Patriarchy plus the romanticization of what is outside the norm explains the trope and is, in fact, the explanation I've usually seen for it from actual feminists.

“Oppression grants women deep insight” seems closer to a gender-based version of the “noble savage” concept than anything feminist I've seen.

Still waiting for actual feminist theory sources for the “theory” in question.

Calling it "logic" is a stretch.

I don't even understand fellow men. Where are these women that understand guys?

That's a really cool theory, but you're also stirring up the hornets' nest by bringing it up anywhere in tech environment, which got really feministic recently. BTW, one thing doesn't seem to stick: they don't label themselves as less powerful - in fact, their misandric agenda keeps trying to repeat the opposite.

I personally believe that the "mysterious creature" concept stems from women being more emotional and thus more difficult to analyse - we seem to have more scientific grounds for logic, whereas we still hadn't even agreed what an emotion is.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewars. It harms the community and leads nowhere new.

I hate dealing in stereotypes, but even if we stick to stereotypes, the idea that men are "less emotional" than women is hilarious.

Two stereotypical emotional memes for men:

- men think with their libido, and will throw away their life for a shag

- men have fragile egos, and will pick up a fight over a perceived injury to their honor

The sexist stereotype "women are emotional" just doesn't work.

Two stereotypical emotional memes for men:

Everyone worth discussing with knows it is an simplification.

Same as "women and feelings".

I'd guess however that pretending there is absolutely no truth to it whatsoever might leave one with a disadvantage when trying to understand what goes on.

'I personally believe that the "mysterious creature" concept stems from women being more emotional'

Why do you think women (as a gender) are more emotional?

I really get a cringe when people act as if their ideals are reality when they are just ideals in their heads. Good morning: a great majority of the world lives traditional lifestyles in patriarchal societies, and even in the "best" parts the gender disparity in responsibilities and rights continues, and the stereotypes are true to some extent for most of them too.

I dislike feminism per se as I see it to be just another sexism and not a step towards gender equality, as it tends to cause sexual etichette becoming more visual and everything having gender associations, and comes with detrimental practices like positive discrimination and extension of gender equality into non gender-related parts of life. And in tech these are so much amplified.

He can't prove it logically, but he feels very strongly that it must be true.

Yeah, I think that's a trope that needs unpacking to be credible.

If anything, I would say women tend to be more inclined to sharing and talking about their emotions. Men tend to try to hide them, or fight them. Which often pushes us down a progression of more extreme emotions, rather than gently easing ourselves back to center.

Fighting/denying our emotions also causes us to try to rationalize perceptions driven by our emotions, by ascribing them to the world around us. Because that's a false attribution, it makes it harder for our teams to get an accurate picture of the world outside our emotions.

For the same reason the rest of the majority of the population believes it;

It's generally true.

Okay let's play this game. Let's accept that women are indeed more emotional creatures.

(So tempted to get all sarky with "wide-eyed" and "fragile" but onwards.)

Now what's wrong with being emotional? Even in environments such as tech, this is a necessity. Ultimately people use tech, so damn right we need to be emotional about it.

'Emotional fits' though uncomfortable to watch don't actually occur often, but when it does, it is usually grounded in a very good reason, which may not be made clear yet.

So either way, actually, it's still way better for us to embrace differences and listen to each other for a richer working environment and output. Diversity is only a barrier when you choose to look at it that way.

| "Women being more emotional"

You just cited the same argument to justify why the argument isn't true.

The lack of self-awareness in this comment is simply hilarious.

I can't access the research, but I was wondering if they tested on mostly men or if there was a decent size female group as well, and if they found any difference between men and women in this regard.

If men were more susceptible in a statistically significant way they would have called it out at least as a "further research needed" because it opens the door for future resource allocation. If women were more susceptible in a statistically significant way they wouldn't have framed the discussion so negatively in terms of CEOs and world leaders but instead framed it as a health issue because doing anything else in most academic settings is being needlessly reckless and unprofessional.

Since there's no mention whatsoever I'm betting there was no meaningful difference or the test group wasn't big enough to investigate the possibility of said difference.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jofi.12432/full

They don't talk about it in any sentences, but they found that female CEOs correlate with having slightly higher stock volatility (1.612). Not sure if this is a valid interpretation, as I'm reading from a table.

N = 8533 CEOs, btw.

This is a remarkably low-quality article, and the citations are horrendously scattered throughout. This is much better, and clearer article (cited inside the original) from 2009:

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/losing_touc...

I wonder if this is a common feature of leaders rather than a degenerative disease. Very competitive environments make way for sociopaths to get up to the top more frequently than normal people.

When you're leading a team or doing public speaking and just starting out, one of the challenges is that you second guess yourself terribly after you have chatted to the group. I think empathy is part of the cause - you see yourself (and what a complete idiot your are) from the perspective of each individual in the group. It can be debilitating if you don't figure out how to stop yourself from doing that. Part of that is turning off a certain amount of empathy.

As others have pointed out, the article may be flawed. But I think the job of leader calls for reduced empathy or some way to control it and the second guessing yourself that comes with it - and that is probably what the author observed.

I can vouch for it. When you're over people, they're never going to give you their version of the unvarnished truth. You always get the PR-filtered version. Stay in this scenario long enough, and it's very easy to start actually believing the toadies.

Becoming worse at empathy is not the same as brain damage, people loose certain skills all the time if they are not exercised.

There is also evidence suggesting that empathy is a poor trait in leaders/judges, are we are most probably to empathizing with people we find relatable.

So you're saying CEOs have trouble relating to the average person? ;)

This article ends in a gloomy note, I fear it might even start normalizing "asshole-ery".

I am reminded of a quote by Buffett or someone similar about more money turning assholes into even bigger assholes meaning there is nothing wrong in staying humble even after you become rich and powerful.

Are the brain studies in this article subject to buggy and flawed fMRI research?

http://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-inv...

edit: further reading https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobe...

No, they are not. None of these studies used FMRI; they were either statistical or behavioral, with no neurological investigation. Did you read the article?

From the article you linked:

"Some people like to use the salmon study as proof that fMRI is woo, but this isn't the case, it's actually a study to show the importance of correcting your stats."

Presumably not, the mirror-neuron study does not use fMRI. It works by a measuring muscle response to transcranial magnetic stimulation.

> A reliable index of resonance is the amplitude of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from a specific muscle via electromyography (EMG), while a person observes another person acting. An MEP is elicited by applying a single, fixed intensity TMS pulse over an area of the motor cortex that corresponds to a muscle underlying the observed action. For a given intensity of stimulation, changes in MEP amplitude reflect changes in the excitability of motor cortical representations (see Figure 1; for a review, see Fadiga et al., 2005).

It would seem some leaders are born this way.

I wonder how easily it can be passed to offspring (via nature or nurture).

Andy Kaufman used to work as bus boy when he was famous and when people asked him, "Are you Any Kaufman?" he would deny it. I wonder if doing things like this is a good treatment.

"Brain damage" is a rather extreme way of putting this. It's a slight decrease in empathy. Which sounds bad, but makes perfect sense. Empathetic people make terrible leaders. They get taken advantage of. They seek approval from others instead of making what they think is the best decision. They have trouble saying "no." They are indecisive when a decision is controversial and might upset some people.

I know this because I think I am an overly empathetic person, and I know I make a terrible leader. Even watching shows like the West Wing stresses me out a bit and I don't envy people who have to make hard decisions.

The downsides you speak of are not caused by being empathetic.

They are caused by not having developed skills in setting boundaries.

Being worried about upsetting people isn't a feature of empathy. It's a feature of a lack of perspective.

Might the best leader be the empathetic leader who recognizes and understands others' perspectives with enough self-control to not give in to others emotions?

I don't think reducing empathy would improve leadership. Ideally you'd expand your empathy to people you aren't directly interacting with.

For example, the difficult decision of firing a problem employee is made more difficult by empathy for that employee, but made easier by empathy for affected coworkers and customers.

Leaders don't but managers do lose their mental capacities.

I wonder if one could simulate the effects of power by having subjects play Civilization?

Article starts with jokes and it's hard for me to keep following as if it was a serious research.

Shower thought: So does love.

I completely misunderstood the headline going in, expecting something to do with the "current times voltage" sort of power and wondering what sort of gruesome experiment electrocuting brains was going on.

haha, that's what I thought too, some sort of EMF type research or something.

Mirroring = doing whatever others are doing / fitting in.

It makes sense that people in authoritative positions would not do this as often.

I don't think that is what "mirroring" means as used in this article. It's about visualizing oneself doing something someone else is doing (aka empathy, to some degree), not copying what is being done.

As in the sense of Dr. Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror.

http://www.donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/Timothy_Leary%...

Mirroring = doing whatever others are doing / fitting in.

It's a natural guess, but no. Check out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

Still, it seems related to understanding and following others. I think many so-called "leaders" today aren't even serious leaders but actually they have a somewhat unnatural role of imposing on their subordinates arbitrary decisions received from their superiors, cold-blooded analyses, formal processes, etc. In such situations, understanding of the subordinates is unnecessary and any subconscious tendencies to follow their emotional states actively counterproductive, as it is the "leader" whose job is to dictate reality.

The article isn't talking about mirror neurons though.

It's referencing the section of the brain that is used for social mirroring, I believe.

I think it is talking about mirror neurons. The article states

> Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University, in Ontario, [...] found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,” that may be a cornerstone of empathy.

This paper this refers to is https://www.oveo.org/fichiers/power-changes-how-the-brain-re... , which states

> with respect to action observation, neural circuits that are related to action execution become active when the person observes someone else making the same action; in other words, the observer’s brain resonates with the model’s motor behavior. We refer to the network of brain regions involved in this process as the motor resonance system. Motor resonance includes the human parietofrontal mirror system, and many believe that resonance reflects mirror system activity. [...] Researchers suggest that motor resonance provides a scaffold for understanding the actions of our interaction partners, and those actions are frequently less important to those with high-power status. [...] In the present study, we examine whether power can increase or decrease interpersonal sensitivity by examining the effects of power priming on motor resonance.

The parietofrontal mirror system is the classic set of mirror neurons which were first identified in monkeys.

it's not monkey see, monkey do - it's monkey see, monkey imagines what it would be like for itself to do the same thing (what it would 'be' like also includes such things as what it would 'look' like)

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