How power destroys the brain

Power suppresses empathy

Historian Henry Adams described power as "a tumor that destroys the victim's capacity for empathy."

Psychologist Dacher Keltner has come to the conclusion that under the influence of power, people behave impulsively, do not realize the risk, and can hardly put themselves in the place of another person.

Research What Doesn’t Kill You Will Only Make You More Risk-Loving: Early-Life Disasters and CEO Behavior. published in The Journal of Finance in February 2016 showed interesting results. It turns out that leaders who survived a high-impact disaster as a child are less likely to take risks. And those who survived a natural disaster, as a result of which not many people died, on the contrary, are willing to take risks.

Brain research neuroscientist Sukhvinder Obhi has compared the brains of people with varying degrees of power. He found that those with more power had impaired processes likely responsible for empathy.

Power reduces the ability to recognize other people's emotions

In the fall of 2016, at a meeting of the US Congress, deputies interrogated John Stumpf, now the former CEO of Wells Fargo Bank. They accused him of having about 5,000 bank employees (who were later fired) open over 2 million phony accounts over the years for their own benefit.5,300 Wells Fargo employees fired over 2 million phony accounts. … Many were amazed at Stumpf's behavior at the meeting. The man who ran one of the largest banks in the world seemed unable to understand the emotions of his interlocutors. He looked lost. Even the surprise of some people expressed aloud could not bring him to his senses ("He's probably joking!", "I can't believe he says that").

Influential people find it more difficult to understand the feelings of the person depicted in the photo, or to predict the reaction of a colleague to any comment.

They stop repeating the gestures and facial expressions of the interlocutor, although this trait is peculiar to people.

According to the study Control, Interdependence and Power: Understanding Social Cognition in Its Social Context. psychologist Susan Fiske, power reduces the need to read people's emotions because it empowers us with what we used to have to lure from others.

Because people in power are less able to understand the behavior of others, they often think stereotypically and rely on their own vision.

Paradoxically, because of power, a person loses those abilities that helped to achieve it.

Methods of dealing with the detrimental effects of power on health

Temporary power (for example, the post of head of a student organization) does not change the brain in the way that permanent power does. And it is quite difficult to stop this influence. Sometimes it's easier to stop feeling your power.

To prevent power from spoiling a person, he needs to descend from heaven to earth.

It happens that someone close to him helps to sober up an influential person. For example, Winston Churchill was assisted by his wife. And Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, says her mother told her to "leave the crown in the garage."

David Owen, former British Foreign Secretary, in his book Case History. Ailments of statesmen of the last century”spoke about the illnesses of British prime ministers and American presidents. For example, Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke, Anthony Eden suffered from drug addiction, Lyndon Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt may have suffered from bipolar disorder.

According to Owen, leaders are prone to the so-called hybrid syndrome - a mental disorder from the possession of power. It is characterized by arrogant and thoughtless behavior, loss of connection with reality and demonstration of one's own incompetence. Owen founded the Daedalus Trust, an organization that studies and fights hybrid syndrome.

David Owen himself prevents this syndrome in this way: he remembers actions that help to pacify pride, watches documentaries about ordinary people and always reads letters from voters.