Are powerful people more likely to cheat

Are powerful people more likely to cheat?

Are people with questionable morals just naturally drawn to positions of power and authority, or does the power that goes with the position change people for the worse?

Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois and Tilburg University in the Netherlands developed a series of experiments to answer this question.  Groups of student volunteers were asked to recall and write about times in their lives when they were in a position of high and low power, and the process of mentally reliving these events would “prime” the volunteers for the study.  Half the group would be in a mindset of high power and the other in one of low power, and each group was then given one of two tasks to perform.

Half of each group was sent to a private room, given a pair of ten-sided dice, and told to report to a lab assistant the number from 0-100 they rolled (the first dice rolled was the tens digit and the second was the ones digit).  The lab assistant would then give the subject a corresponding number of lottery tickets for a drawing to be held after the study was completed, so the higher the number they rolled the more tickets they would receive.  There was no one to witness the rolls of the dice and the participants were on the honor system to report the number to the lab assistant.

The results:

The “high power” subjects reported they rolled 70 on average while the “low power” subjects averaged 59.  Both groups had to have been cheating to some extent because the average should have been closer to 50, but the high power group was definitely cheating in order for their average to be that high.  Try this for yourself – flip a coin 100 times and count the number of heads vs. tails; unless you’re flipping Harvey Dent’s two sided coin you’ll end up with a number closer to 50.

The other half of the group was asked to evaluate on a nine-point morality scale (with one being highly immoral and nine highly moral) what they thought of people who over-reported travel expenses at work.  The high power group in this case rated the behavior as a 5.8 on the nine-point morality scale and the low power group rated it as a 7.2, which would indicate the high power group collectively had a higher sense of morality.

The same groups were then asked how acceptable it would be for someone to break the speed limit if they were running late for an appointment, and if they thought it would be acceptable for them to break the speed limit under the same circumstances.  The high power individuals rated others speeding as a 6.3 on the morality scale but gave it a 7.6 if they were doing the speeding. The low power group saw everyone as being equal; they gave themselves a 7.2 and others a 7.3.

The last questions the groups were asked dealt with tax violations.  If someone else broke a tax law the high power group rated that as 6.6 out of 9 on the morality scale but gave themselves a score of 7.6 if they broke the tax laws.  The low power individuals in this case were actually harder on themselves than others, rating it as a 6.8 if they broke the tax laws and 7.7 if someone else broke the tax law.

So this study demonstrated that people with the mindset of being in a position of power were more likely to profess to be highly moral yet were more likely to behave immorally.

Lord Acton said in 1887 “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, which later became known as Lord Acton’s Dictum.    He was also quoted as saying “Great men are almost always bad men”.  The results of this study seem to indicate that great men (and women, to be fair) may become bad by the nature of their position.  Granted, every single person who is promoted into a position of power and authority isn’t going to turn into a scumbag overnight, but it is interesting the study showed people tend to have a natural proclivity for acting hypocritically and dishonestly when in these positions.

I think there’s some truth to what the researchers discovered.  I’ve been in “high power” positions and bent rules and acted in a completely uncharacteristic manner, and I can also say I’ve been in “low power” positions where I wouldn’t so much as go 2 miles over the speed limit.

One instance that comes to mind happened almost 20 years ago when I was the dorm chief of my basic training flight.  I was the guy the TI’s would come looking for whenever someone would screw up, and dorm chiefs were routinely fired for not being able to maintain the discipline of their airmen.  I was determined to not get fired and used my position and my four flight chiefs to scare a few of the troublemakers and send a message to the rest of the flight.

We ended up doing such a good job we were later recruited by another flight’s TI to trash his “baby” flight’s dorm (a group that had only been there a week or so), and my flight chiefs and I turned that dorm upside down.  Then we got to take turns chewing out the airmen for the condition of their dormitory while they stood at attention.   I’m sure these guys must have screwed up royally to have received this kind of punishment, and I have to say I was glad I was on the giving and not receiving end of that particular activity.  But the fact of the matter is on that occasion I acted in a completely uncharacteristic manner because of my position, and only four short weeks earlier my flight and I were probably very close to being on the receiving end of a similar visit.

So this may explain a lot about some of the scandals we hear about in the news, politicians with mistresses and out of wedlock children, professional sports figures who have their own sex scandals, corporate executives who lie, cheat, and steal, cops who get busted for drugs and drinking on the job, doctors who sexually harass patients.  Maybe we all have the potential for good or evil and it takes circumstances to show our true nature, and without a good moral compass or belief system we are all just as likely to commit the same sins under different circumstances.

So what do you think of the results of the study? Do you think you will act differently when you are in a position of power knowing what you do now?  Will you treat people in positions of power differently?

Have you ever been in a position of power and acted immorally or unethically? How about when you were in a position of low power?

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