When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart
npr.org
npr.org
No real psychologist will tell you that. Not even the worse case of status-quo apologist psychologist.
There are lots of studies in power relations, and I've never seen the lack of empathy exhibited by some powerful people explained away as "they are busy".
This is also one reason why many people I know, don't take psychology serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' without giving a definitive answer. This leaves the asking person in a uncertain and unsatisfied state. definitely. There are other psychologists who explain things logically and simple, that convinces much more people and gives them more insight into the 'why's' rather than squishy explanations of the 'what's'.
That's exactly the reason why I take it seriously. Because it considers many factors, and the multiple facets and interactions between a person and other persons and/or surroundings, and understands that human psychology does not work like some antiquated naive reductionist machinery.
The "definitive answers" on this front ("it's gene X that makes you behave Y, it's that substance in the brain that makes you violent", etc), are for people who believe in silver bullets and one-size-fits-all answers. IMHO they reek of pseudo-science, mixing cause and effect, correlation and causation and working at the wrong level of abstraction.
See http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/20090... for a basic overview of the effects of testosterone.
This fits evolutionary "just so" stories very well. Males in pair bonding species pursue a mix of alpha (impregnate lots of females) and beta (trade child care for access to one female) strategies. A successful male should become more willing to go for alpha behaviors. A successful alpha strategy requires not minding the real negative consequences of your behavior on others. Conversely beta strategies are going to fail hard if you're not deeply aware of the feelings of those around you.
Which is precisely what testosterone does.
Here is the peer-reviewed paper: "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior": http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109
New York Magazine did a feature story about the study: http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/
A PBS piece on the study: http://youtu.be/IuqGrz-Y_Lc
And the documentary: "Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream - Why Poverty?" http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So - also exams the psychology behind power.
Here's another reading: It could also be that we're wired to exploit situations of power. Isn't it convenient that empathy is reduced when you're more powerful, making it more likely for you to (ab)use that power in your own interest? That seems awfully likely to improve your personal reproductive success...
Indeed the sociology research that I've seen on the latter question says that leaders who act in an entitled amoral fashion lead fundamentally less effective organizations than leaders who encourage empathy and cooperation.
Group behavior is merely an evolutionary strategy. And interesting group behaviors can only be understood by analyzing how individuals in the group are incentivized.
maybe powerful leaders who happened to be ruthless spread their genes ruthlessly, more so than the powerful and benevolent
edit: ugh, grammar. this is what I get for posting from a phone
Of course it is. That's not the question, I guess.
The question is: How much difference regarding power (generally expressed in money/wealth) is healthy to society?
"What can’t neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging—was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate voters, determine guilt in court cases, and make sense of everything from musical aptitude to romantic love. But although brain scans and other neurotechnologies have provided groundbreaking insights into the workings of the human brain, the increasingly fashionable idea that they are the most important means of answering the enduring mysteries of psychology is misguided—and potentially dangerous.
In Brainwashed, psychiatrist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal how many of the real-world applications of human neuroscience gloss over its limitations and intricacies, at times obscuring—rather than clarifying—the myriad factors that shape our behavior and identities. Brain scans, Satel and Lilienfeld show, are useful but often ambiguous representations of a highly complex system. Each region of the brain participates in a host of experiences and interacts with other regions, so seeing one area light up on an fMRI in response to a stimulus doesn’t automatically indicate a particular sensation or capture the higher cognitive functions that come from those interactions. The narrow focus on the brain’s physical processes also assumes that our subjective experiences can be explained away by biology alone. As Satel and Lilienfeld explain, this “neurocentric” view of the mind risks undermining our most deeply held ideas about selfhood, free will, and personal responsibility, putting us at risk of making harmful mistakes, whether in the courtroom, interrogation room, or addiction treatment clinic.
A provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience, Brainwashed brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are."
This is also called not being grounded - though it doesn't necessarily mean you don't use logic to dictate your behaviour, though heart is an easier guide at times.
Another reason to stop the decline of the middle class and to begin to reverse this trend.
Oh, I forgot: The Singularity is going to make all of us fine upstanding members of "The Culture" or some such thing :-)
there's an emerging field of research that suggests powerful people who begin to forget their subordinates can be coached back toward their former kindness
I know one way that ought to work, and has the added benefit of being just: stripping them of their power (over others). If there is another way, I'm curious.
An alternative is to constrain the power, as is done in more consensus-oriented labor systems like Scandinavia's, treating the company as a kind of partnership of multiple stakeholders, and having many decisions made by committees with both employer and employee representatives. A kind of weak importing of a few ideas from worker's cooperatives, without actually moving all the way there.
And more importantly, I think there is a difference between justified authority and power. Not that I'm automatically accepting employer and employee relationships as desirable, just like with "citizen vs. politician", but for example it's perfectly okay that parents can yank their kids at the arm when those are about to run into traffic, and otherwise curtail their autonomy, as long as it's justified. That's not power, that's authority, and even authority needs to be constantly re-evaluated and justified.
If you're on an expedition and the most experienced person leads it, one would expect that when they get sick, they would pass that job on without any fuss at all, since it's about the well-being of the expedition, not about their personal power, right? Notice how in many cases instead we have people asserting ownership, certainly when it comes to employers, and even in politics. When was the last time you strolled into a place and up to the manager/president, proved you're smarter in all ways, and successfully convinced them they should give you their job and work under you? Thought so :P
Check out Citigroup's leaked Plutonomy paper[1]. It's details, in disgustingly congratulatory terms, such a stronghold. It is also a literal dictionary definition of conspiracy to maintain a political, economical, and societal control of their financial position.
[1] http://mathbabe.org/2012/08/30/citigroups-plutonomy-memos/ - you will have to check some popular bittorrent sites to find the full paper.
For example: In such a future, farmers might claim that food is a "basic need" and fight to get subsidies, and when their food crop goes out of style, they may get the politicians to subsidize their land to go fallow. Or even to the point where their unhealthy crop would be overproduced relative to demand and sold to the public as a a part of a "healthy diet", leading to obesity and widespread medical problem.
In such a future, doctors may claim that all of their medical procedures are a "basic need", and fight for a billing system that bills by procedure - to the point of requiring people to purchase coverage for procedures they will likely not need, and leading to unnecessary and risky medical procedures being performed on patients, with an untransparent pricing structure, leading to cost overruns that are an albatross on society.
In such a future, bankers may claim that access to financial systems is a "basic need", and when their malfeasance results in systemic economic collapse, they fight for a rescue package that soaks them in money forcibly taken from the public.
And in this future, sadly, the truly needy will always find a way to be unhelped by the wealthy and politically powerful (even some who are well-intentioned) who have captured the machinery and redefined "basic need" to their benefit.
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat...Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes
Your premise that if people's needs are met they will do nothing I feel is plain wrong - people will be bored then, and there are other societal pressures that can drive people to do, to improve themselves, to be productive. Want to be an attractive mate? Want to be an interesting person? Want to be more attractive (not talking just physical of course) and a more interesting person than other contenders? People and animals through evolution get enough of what they need to perpetuate their species forward - humans with out abilities for creating machines to automate processes and make our own lives practically infinitely more productive (and for the whole world) really changes, and I'd argue, lowers what minimum amount of work each of us actually need to do in service of others (to take care of others) - though we might as well make and incentivize all of the work we do (including education) towards what is good and what is in service for others; If everyone's working towards taking care of everyone else, then you'll be taken care of very well. :)
Capitalism itself we now know and have learned is great for innovation, however not for sustainability - so that is its sickness. It's not difficult to change certain economic cycles to turn capitalism into incentivizing and directing resources into a positive cycle for everyone to benefit - it's a matter of identifying the leading metrics and affecting them through policy.
Land being given away got people being productive, so that's the leading metric there - we need to incentivize and help people be passionate about something, to enjoy doing things, so they do them - become productive. I don't think it's directly either that it giving people a basic income alone really breaks the 'stronghold' the capitalist has. The issue you have to watch out for is if you de-incentivize capitalistic behaviour then people might not do jobs that we need. You have to manage the ecosystem, and not control it - though what businesses do, is control, and that causes problems -- and by managing you allow natural cycles to show themselves, and then can guide them as you discover and need to direct them (if they indeed need some direction due to negative impact / a negative cycle for society exists).
Re: Citigroup Plutonomy paper - Neat. I knew these structures existed, though not the source. The way things got done was whoever has more resources amassed who then can leverage them for their own gain -- if that's what they want (and that's usually only time they'll spend their resources/money, though government should be leveraging resources for their own gain; giving land away initially was useful because it was a strong enough incentive to get activity happening). This is similarly what things like the stock market allows, companies to amass large sums of money. FTA, "But as yet, there seems little political fight being born out on this battleground." This is language of karma. The effects of karma takes time to happen sometimes, for organization to occur - and of course as they state, you're fighting compliance of a mass market who mostly have enough to just get by - and it's perpetuated this way and always floats around this because businesses will adjust their price points/profit level based on people's demands, and there are certain things people require; We'll really be in trouble when for-profit driven motives cause certain resources to be no longer available - one of which being a healthy environment that we're allowing to be polluted. Capitalistic cycles are in a controlled-negative cycle. It doesn't take a lot of policy to shift this to positive cycles to start being self-perpetuating, however there will be backlash/hate/fear from the status quo who want to maintain. I think the education and awareness required of society is such that it can happen relatively quickly - the internet is providing such a platform.
Also FTA, "To this end, the cleaning up of business practice, by high-profile champions of fair play, might actually prolong plutonomy." This is funny because they're not really doing this to the degree they should in the U.S. - so perhaps they're shooting themselves in the foot - which is good news for society that no one really seems at the wheel of this way of living, they may all be doing their part individually - but without a visionary leading then a plan in the opposite direction can occur with relatively little pushback.
My point wasn't that if people's needs were met, they would do nothing- my point is was that with needs met people wouldn't be forced to choose to either starve or spend the majority of their waking hours working for someone else. And if the profit motive was not the main force driving productivity society, more time and energy can be dedicated to personal pursuits or actual work that 'changes the world' for the better.
Maybe that's just confusing witty sayings with arguments, but until Costco buys out all other companies except Valve et al, I don't see how this changes a lot. I never said you can't work hard or "lead" people, or that big projects don't require coordination and that individuals take themselves back so the undertaking can go smoothly. But power that respects no criticism, no logic, and only bows to equal or greater counter-power, still seems to be the norm, sadly. Kudos to the Costco guy, this bit
“I just think people need to make a living wage with health benefits,” says Jelinek. “It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It’s really that simple.”
reminds me of Henry Ford, who at least got that bit right, too. But when you generally look at corporate profits vs. wages, the "Costco spirit" seems to be an outlier. That guy is plain not greedy, which helps.
Why would I have to know the person? Just the fact that he likes owning guns is enough. It's a specific mentality that makes you like those kind of things.
I thought hackers were for science and understood numbers...
I sincerely doubt it, or you would not say what you have said. If you truly are "for science" then you should understand that things are not nearly as simple as your political ideology dictates. You need to go beyond the simple, obvious correlation and try to look at all of the variables.
And even if it were demonstrated to be the case that the higher rates of gun homicides are directly attributable to lax gun policies in the United States, I would still not be in favor of severely restricting gun ownership. And don't be so presumptuous to assume that this makes me any less a "hacker". It just means that I have beliefs and morals that are not derived directly from science and numbers.
Why? If we should let science exclusively dictate our political policies, then we should outlaw drinking. And smoking. And driving. These all lead to a large number of deaths. We should also implement a government controlled diet throughout the entire populace to reduce the rates of obesity and malnutrition. We should also have a computer program which determines the jobs and wages of everyone in the United States so that we maximize productivity and minimize poverty. Would that be your utopia?
An absurdly inflammatory statement that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand?