Power Perspectives

In Philip Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison. The experiment was soon stopped: prisoners were on the verge of serious breakdown as guards displayed increasingly sadistic and humiliating behaviours. The Stanford Experiment provided insights into the effect that authority and power can have over an individual's behaviours: there was nothing inherently evil in the guards' individual personalities, the study concluded, the characterisation of power and its paraphernalia were, it seems, the catalysts for the guards' excesive behaviours.

A study by Lammers, Stapel and Galinsky early this year reviewed five experiments that looked into how power affects people's behaviours and judgement. The experiments saw “powerful” participants condemn the cheating of others (like the over-reporting of travel expenses) while cheating themselves (for example, when given a chance to cheat on a dice game, the "powerful" people cheated more than the others). “According to our research, power and influence can cause a severe disconnect between public judgment and private behavior, and as a result, the powerful are stricter in their judgment of others while being more lenient toward their own actions” stated Galinsky.

It seems that power (and its paraphernalia) will not only make you behave in more obscure ways, it will also make you tolerant of your own abuses while intolerant of others'. So if you're sitting back in your big office chair thinking that this doesn't apply to you but that you can think of others to whom it would ... well that might just be case and point.