When Power Goes to Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart (2013) | Hacker News Reader

When Power Goes to Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart (2013)

npr.org

78 pointsvezycash36 comments

This was the highlight for me:

It turns out, feeling powerless boosted the mirror system — people empathized highly. But, Obhi says, "when people were feeling powerful, the signal wasn't very high at all."

From an evolutionary point of view, one can argue that individuals with less power need to seek collective advantages more than those with higher degrees of power. Empathy enables collective benefits.

The question is if empathy is just unnecessary or is it actively harmful for people with power. Does that part of the brain shut down as a simple energy saving measure because it's not necessary or is it actively suppressed because keeping it active would be harmful for individual and his genetic relatives or even the people he has power over?

It might also shut down because they no longer direct their attention towards other people. When you have peers and superiors the emotions of others matter a lot more to your goals then when you only have subordinates.

Possibly the latter. I haven't heard of the brain resorting to such energy saving measures.

I have another (unsubstantiated) theory too: there is a group advantage in those with power having reduced empathy. Individuals in leadership positions will need to direct the group in such ways that are beneficial to the group overall, but may be harmful to specific individuals. Leaders with high degrees of empathy might find this difficult. This is probably why the Myers-Briggs type "ENTJ" (often associated with leaders) is jokingly summarized as "I'm very sorry, but you have to die." [1]

[1] https://www.librarything.com/topic/20927

Brain has incredible energy saving measures. When you look through your eyes you process just few percent of the image. The rest is pretty much ignored because it usually isn't necessary for anything.

When you are trying to think through something it's really hard and tiresome not to default to stereotypes and what you already figured out earlier about similar thing.

Basically brain is as lazy as it can get away with.

This is modern myth, typical of dictatorial regimes. Even the most powerful people in the planet need others to exist and being powerful.

People who deserve their power simply know even by instinct that they have to keep looking at the big pictures constantly to direct others correctly so they need to take emotions into account but remain detached and focused with ratio both to decide properly and to direct properly.

People who not deserve their power but they still have it act as you describe.

> ... remain detached ...

That's what lack of empathy gives you.

Empathy is not just knowing people emotions. It's feeling their emotions and being compelled to act according to them as if they were your own.

When a ship is sinking anyone feel the emotion to help anyone, but officers have to know how much people they can save and how much people can die trying to save anyone so they need to remain detached.

It's not a lack of empathy, it's the ancient at impossibilia nemo tenetur, powerless people simply do not know or understand or refuse to accept that in emergency situations, powerful people need to know, understand and do their best in any situation.

You can't be detached when you have empathy. Empathy is exactly lack of detachment from emotions of others.

Perhaps it's not the right term in English (sorry, my English is really poor), for detached I do not mean "not feeling emotions" or "not caring" but feel the emotion remaining rational, cold enough to keep ratio drive decision not emotions. I do not know a specific English term for that...

If you "have powers" you can't simply act for yourself you have to take any other under your power/your responsibilities into account and act for the best for all. Since that's normally/often hard/impossible you need to being able to take hard choices, certainly not emotion-less (if so you are really dangerous) but also certainly not driven by your emotions. A balance is needed, like in any "engineering project".

> So when people felt power, they really did have more trouble getting inside another person's head.

Interesting research, I'll be curious to know if it gets confirmed.

Anyway, I can offer a REAL, striking example of how people can change once power "goes to their head".

This is a real story, I was there when it happened, I saw & heard all, I was sitting about one meter away...

This took place in the early 2000s, I was working, as a contractor, in a BIG company. In the room we were several contractors, working for several teams (with different bosses). One of my coworkers was a political refugee in France, he was a political activist at home (an african country under a dictature) and had to flee, so he went to France. I knew he was into politics because during pauses he would talk on his phone and take appointments & the like (I was sitting in front of him, so I heard part of it).

One morning, as I arrived (he was usually the first in the room), he told me that something bad had happened... His teenage daughter was supposed to come and visit him in France (his family was still living in Africa), but at the airport she had been arrested by the police and had _disappeared_ with no news...

I don't think I need to insist on the seriousness of the situation & the fears that he must have had. Police in dictatorships are not know for being nice... You can easily imagine what could have happened to her.

Of course, this had been done in order to put pressure on him.

Then his boss entered the room, to talk about their project.

(Now, I swear that everything is 100% true and not exaggerated.) My coworked started, again, to explain the abduction of his daughter to his boss. His -loud- boss's reaction, with half a chuckle: "Ha! you're a man who brings trouble!". Then he left the room.

I was speechless. To be perfectly clear, this was NOT a "defensive laugh", the type of laugh that you do when things are bad and you don't know how to react, no he REALLY did not care.

My coworker, dismayed, turned to me and said "You know, that guy and me, we used to be like fingers of the same hand. Since he became a manager, he's gone crazy".

I could tell a lot of other horror stories about that manager. A few years later he even cost me my job (I refused a contract that would have put me in his team, this got me fired).

For those of you who may be wondering what happened to the daughter: her family "bought" her back. Corruption goes both ways...

A sad example of how power can kill someone heart...

> Corruption goes both ways...

What does that mean in this context?

It means that the corrupt police who were willing to kidnap his daughter on orders from bad people were also willing to release her in exchange for money from the victim's family. At least, that's how I read it.

Thanks, that makes sense. For a moment it sounded to me like it says both parties in this interaction were corrupt, but that doesn't make sense.

I went from being an individual contributor to a manager, and I would interpret that situation differently. When you are the boss, you are getting bombarded constantly. From above, below, peers, you name it. Your cognitive load goes up so much that you actively avoid bringing even more onto your plate. I definitely found myself trying on-the-fly to keep interactions superficial, especially in a group setting, just to avoid taking on yet another burden onto my already full plate.

Perhaps that would mean I suck as a manager. Though honestly I've seen the same effect on pretty much everyone I've seen go up the manager career path. I don't take any of it personally.

There are two sizes of problems -- mine, and yours, and mine will always be much more important to me.

> There are two sizes of problems -- mine, and yours

So if you drop a penny and I break my arm, you'd care more about the dropped penny, and when I say "ouch" you say "not now, can't you see I just dropped a penny"?

Mel Brooks: "If I cut my finger, that's tragedy... Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die."

Bitterness is always less bitter in someone else's mouth, pain seems to be less painful too.

You contrive an example but miss the fundamental truth. People will always focus more on their own problems than someone else's. I'm amused that this seems controversial. OP certainly doesn't care about the boss's problems. Which totally makes sense, except the boss, by virtue of his position, is not allowed the same privilege. A bit hipocratic but... Ok.

>When you are the boss, you are getting bombarded constantly. From above, below, peers, you name it. Your cognitive load goes up so much that you actively avoid bringing even more onto your plate.

Yes, I can see how saying some words of empathy or showing understanding about someone whose DAUGHTER HAD JUST BEEN KINGNAPPED might be too much on one's plate.

Perhaps the hardest part about managing people is a non trivial percentage of them will dump their personal problems on you and it can be overwhelming. It's hard to generate instant empathy on demand when everything that comes at you is someone's crisis.

Maybe the boss in this site could have been more diplomatic but I see it from his perspective and I can appreciate the need to try and push it away.

Sometimes I wonder if tech folks in particular are prone to being snowflakes.

Empathy is a learned skill, much like language, we are hard wired to be able to do it but it has to be worked on and a lot of that work has to be done in childhood.

A lot of people are not loved in childhood, this may be due to a poor or a rich background. Being sent to boarding school far away from home or having a single mum on crack can result in a child not learning about love. The result is narcissism and those cursed with narcissism can do a convincing job when it suits them of emulating empathy. They might care about those around them when it means they have something to gain, but this is exploitative caring, not what passes for normal emotion for most people who grew up with parents that loved them.

Narcissists do love power and money. Therefore there is a tendency for them to want to rule the world, be boss of the company or to acquire more wealth than might make sense.

We all have a certain amount of narcissism in us, normally this is in check and not a crippling disease, as per the seriously unloved-as-a-child brigade. This study appeals to this innate narcissism, and, we can all be manipulated into being 'good Germans' or 'Christian saints'.

There are many situations - e.g. being President - where mere mortals have no interest in the job. To wear the crown and have the power naturally horrifies. This does not mean we just want to be lead, but there is an aspect of this.

As a society we are generally good about making sure chronic alcoholics don't rule the roost but we expect everyone to take part in a drink in social situations. We can spot when someone likes the bottle a bit too much and deal with it. Narcissism is a bit more tricky as the beyond-the-pale selfish narcissist has the skills to feign empathy until they get the power they crave. Then it is too late and we wonder how such a cruel, selfish person got that way. Or maybe we are still under their spell and imagine they 'think like us' and care.

For the benefit of humanity we need to have simple tests to identify those with overly narcissistic tendencies and not let them into positions of power such as being president. A 'breathalyser test' for the mind.

I mean, the thing about narcissism is that those with overly narcissistic tendencies are not exactly hard to spot. There are only so many ways for a person to be consistently self-aggrandizing, entitled, envious of others' success, craving for universal admiration even more so than power, etc. And yes, "not letting those people be president, maybe?" is a good idea. It's also really hard - the primary process especially, even more so than the general election, rewards people who are committed to rallying the party base and inspiring universal admiration from others, by any means necessary. We've seen so many examples of that.

Plenty of narcissists fly below the radar. NPD is a spectrum, and individuals fall on it in different degrees. What you imagine as a typical narcissist in your comment is closer to an outlier than the average.

You can even find them in nonprofit, charity organizations where they use their jobs to boost their social status. They use goodwill and greater than average charisma to leverage friendships and create stalwart allies. Then they stir up tension and controversy behind the scenes, and their friends come to their defense, thus solidifying them as allies on the narcissist's side.

Could this explain why women may be considered more empathic or compassionate considering gender imbalances across societies?

Might make sense. I've noticed a trend where people who come from less privileged backgrounds are more empathetic/compassionate, possibly from experience or out of necessity, whereas their more wealthy/powerful counterparts have the luxury of treating people however they please.

I worked at a job where I loaded up people's cars and trucks and around 25% of people tipped. I always found it funny how the more expensive the car, the less likely they were to tip.

Maybe in part, although I think girls, more so than boys, also tend to be raised to care for others as well as express their own emotions, which would make them better at reading others' emotions too.

Girls certainly do seem to care more about appearing caring and compassionate than the average guy would want to (in contrast, a 'male' upbringing would tend to phrase pro-social norms in terms of things like fairness, a strong character and the inner pride of pursuing a virtuous life), but to imagine that they're more pro-social in general seems like a bit of a stretch! (I mean, it's not like girls can't be just as mean and spiteful to others when they have the inclination and opportunity to be.)

How would we act if you're unarmed and I had a gun pointed at you?

We are all marketers, trying to achieve our goals - no matter how trivial. Hence, we negotiate, flatter, smile even when we don't want to, try to know what makes the other person tick. Problem is this method's slow, expensive and inefficient (like American democracy).

BUT, when a person can compel action, things change. The brain takes the easy, direct but less creative approach. Authorities become uncaring because they don't need to. Problem is this method is efficient and cheap like Chinese dictatorship.

I guess this topic becomes easier to reason out if it becomes a dictatorship vs democracy, free market vs monopolies, and inbreeding vs diversity of ideas debate.

It may or may not be relevant, but the moment you become a manager, mirroring becomes more painful: because there are some tradeoffs between people under you that aren't going to be "win/win" all 'round, and you're the one who gets to disappoint someone. I can see that for some bosses, the easiest thing is just not to run the simulations at all; not to acknowledge too clearly that you're (inevitably) causing disappointment. Not the right choice, but an easy choice.

I think the general idea that, in a democracy, the people keep the government in check derives from this sort of thing. People with power can start behaving differently/oddly. At a personal level, I usually try to keep these people in check. But, that's something of a post-hoc justification, as they really just rub me the wrong way and I call them out, question them, or do something disobedient somewhat reflexively, and only sometimes catch myself in time to control my reaction.

2013 though

Good catch. Notably, this is pre-replication crisis, and the evidence is kinda underwhelming anyway for the claims that are being made. The theory that increasing the salience of personal power makes experimental subjects less empathetic could've been tested more directly than that. And as for a practical application to things like fairness and pro-sociality, what we know about e.g. the well-established literature on "Dictator" vs. "Ultimatum" games strongly suggests that people in a position of power are only marginally less pro-social/"fair" to others, if that.

> The theory that increasing the salience of personal power makes experimental subjects less empathetic could've been tested more directly than that.

How? (not challenging, just genuinely curious)

Added. Thanks!

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