Study: Power Causes Brain Damage (literally)

[Don Fluffles]

You know the saying Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. Now it's backed by science!

Article From The Atlantic:


This talks about how having more power can essentially kill empathy alongside other crucial people skills.

The historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, when he described power as "a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies." But that's not far from where Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, ended up after years of lab and field experiments. Subjects under the influence of power, he found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people's point of view.
Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University, in Ontario, recently described something similar. Unlike Keltner, who studies behaviors, Obhi studies brains. And when he put the heads of the powerful and the not-so-powerful under a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine, he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, "mirroring," that may be a cornerstone of empathy. Which gives a neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the "power paradox": Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.

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That explains why dictators, CEOs, and Trump are all shit.

But it also talks about a potential solution: someone to keep you grounded can help keep some of that empathy.

...No and yes. It's difficult to stop power's tendency to affect your brain. What's easier—from time to time, at least—is to stop feeling powerful.

Insofar as it affects the way we think, power, Keltner reminded me, is not a post or a position but a mental state. Recount a time you did not feel powerful, his experiments suggest, and your brain can commune with reality.

...

PepsiCo CEO and Chairman Indra Nooyi sometimes tells the story of the day she got the news of her appointment to the company's board, in 2001. She arrived home percolating in her own sense of importance and vitality, when her mother asked whether, before she delivered her "great news," she would go out and get some milk. Fuming, Nooyi went out and got it. "Leave that damn crown in the garage" was her mother's advice when she returned.

The point of the story, really, is that Nooyi tells it. It serves as a useful reminder about ordinary obligation and the need to stay grounded. Nooyi's mother, in the story, serves as a "toe holder," a term once used by the political adviser Louis Howe to describe his relationship with the four-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Howe never stopped calling Franklin.

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So yeah we have the science as further proof that we need to defang big business.

What say you, ERA?

 

[Nos]

I dont have empathy and people skills yet I poses zero power.

 

[Orange Piccolo]

Power from Chainsaw Man certainly does.

 

[Midgarian]

What say you, ERA?

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Eat the rich.

 

[Isilia]

My brain can't take more damage

 

[samoyed]

Don't need to tell me twice. Nice to have a neurological justification for socialism. Hierarchal power structures inherently separate the powerful from "grounding" factors. Yeah "human nature" my ass, except if that "nature" is corruption and abuse.

 

[Darryl M R]

Privilege allows you to avoid unfavorable environments and narrows the range of people in your social network.

If you are fortunate to have all your meals delivered and/or prepared, you may find it hard to empathize with essential [grocery] workers because you do not see their everyday struggle. When you are able to drive wherever necessary for work, you may find it hard to empathize with people who take public transportation.

The reverse could be true, but often times because someone lacks privilege they are understanding of others struggles... excluding when people trick themselves into believe bootstrap rhetoric.

Then add in some survival bias and individualism and you can clearly see how power distorts ones perception.

 

[Liam Allen-Miller]

I'm not entirely surprised by this? It seems to jive with popular concepts and ideas about people in power, or even about a lot of celebrities. Naturally everyone is different, and their thresholds for succumbing would be too, I suppose.

 

[CrankyJay]

2017?

 

[Dreamgazer]

Power from Chainsaw Man certainly does.

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Well, everything in Chainsaw Man does.

 

[Orange Piccolo]

Well, everything in Chainsaw Man does.

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Yeah, definitely not the best fictional world to live in.

 

[Volimar]

Narf!

 

[Skade]

I say that thus, my constant refusal to be given any sort of position of power must have been a self defense move and that my conservation instincts must be extremely strong.

Apart from that... Eh. I'd say people must have something wrong to want to be in a position of power to begin with. I'm not sure it's the position that makes people "wrong".

 

[Cocolina]

 

[ItRhymesWithDoom]

This strikes me as a spurious correlation, but if everyone just gives me their power I will bomb this planet. Why? Would you believe me if I said I don't recall but I am still going to do it?

GIVE ME THE POWER, I BEG OF YOUUU

 

[Zelda]

I think I remember reading somewhere that people from poor villages, or poor people in general, tend to be more kind compared to the rich folks living in cities. Guess it kind of makes sense.

 

[flaxknuckles]

I would like some of that brain damage please

 

[Lord Fanny]

I get that this is a scientific study so I want to be dismissive, but I mean...no fucking shit?

 

[Z-Beat]

Power

Not even once

 

[Kard8p3]

Well, everything in Chainsaw Man does.

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We will not shit talk the best manga in years in my house.

 

[HeavenlyOne]

This strikes me as a spurious correlation, but if everyone just gives me their power I will bomb this planet. Why? Would you believe me if I said I don't recall but I am still going to do it?

GIVE ME THE POWER, I BEG OF YOUUU

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Sound good to me. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Geeko]

With great power comes great brain damage.

 

[LazyLain]

But it also talks about a potential solution: someone to keep you grounded can help keep some of that empathy.

What say you, ERA?

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Kircheis

 

[Deleted member 17388]

Probably also applied to people who wants power (Even if they never get it)

 

[Aurongel]

Probably also explains the prevalence of sociopathic tendencies in CEO's, managers and religious institutions.

 

[cnorwood]

Probably also applied to people who wants power (Even if they never get it)

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I was talking to my girlfriend about this after the Smash Expose. She doesn't know anything about it but I was asking her if in even relatively small power structures you will find people who will get a position of power and exploit anyone they can.

If people seem to do this in social power structures (churches, video game tournaments) in what way should we expect it to be different in ones rooted in capitalism. I feel like its a toss up for anyone who seeks power to be probably some sort of predator and wants to exploit others in some way.

 

[Crayolan]

Power corrupts. That's not exactly a secret, but I guess it's nice to have evidence of the exact ways in which disconnecting from the average person affects one's brain. Also lines up with those studies saying most CEOs are sociopaths.

 

[samoyed]

That's not exactly a secret, but I guess it's nice to have evidence of the exact ways in which disconnecting from the average person affects one's brain. Also lines up with those studies saying most CEOs are sociopaths.

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Psychopathy in the workplace - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Iirc it's not so much that being CEO makes you psychopathic so much as being modestly psychopathic makes you good CEO material and attracts you to CEO level positions. It is a bit of a chicken-egg problem.

This list is particularly striking:

Careers with highest proportion of psychopaths
According to Dutton, the ten careers with the highest proportion of psychopaths are:[16]

1. CEO
2. Lawyer
3. Media (TV/radio)
4. Salesperson
5. Surgeon
6. Journalist
7. Police officer
8. Clergy
9. Chef
10. Civil servant

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[Bricktop]

Don't buy it. These people lacked empathy and people skills before gaining power. People who seek power are already fucked up, they don't become that way after the fact.

 

[Powdered Egg]

This still won't stop me from worshipping CEOs and billionaires! /s

 

[Lunar Wolf]

Psychopathy in the workplace - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Iirc it's not so much that being CEO makes you psychopathic so much as being modestly psychopathic makes you good CEO material and attracts you to CEO level positions. It is a bit of a chicken-egg problem.

This list is particularly striking:

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It's not inherent sociopaths that ladder climb. It's that the more you ladder climb, the more sociopathic you become is how I've seen it

 

[samoyed]

It's not inherent sociopaths that ladder climb. It's that the more you ladder climb, the more sociopathic you become is how I've seen it

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The way I see it is, the system (the ladder itself) encourages the climbing, which is what a certain type of psychopathy excels at, the so called "organizational psychopaths". So the system itself filters out the unambitious but psychopathy is positively correlated with ambition while compassion is inversely correlated with ambition. History has more Caesars than Cincinnatuses after all.

 

[Joe]

Ah, so that's why Jafar did it.

 

[AlexBasch]

Makes sense. My former boss was a lowly ass reporter just like myself, and within a year of her raise to editor, she basically burned every bridge with the people at design, media PR's and her coworkers by lacking empathy and never accepting any kind of mistakes she did.

Like, she honestly went from regular worker to insufferable asshole in twelve months. Nobody wants to work with her anymore.

What's better is before we were all fired, our editorial director wanted us to keep working in the office and refused to let us work from home "flu kills more than COVID! You're all being paranoid and that shit needs to stop!", etc.

 

[Amnesty]

This is something that was already observable. Have you ever seen wealthy people talk at any length? They're often not very articulate or insightful.

The thing with power is that it's an utterly pointless endeavour. It's like masturbation but instead of an orgasm you just get a delusion.

Power de-intellectualizes because it's such a narrow, featureless aspiration that doesn't bring with it any the greater richness of human experience.

I'd imagine that power could also correlate with things like paranoia, since it's so self focused. Like being a psychopath generally isn't a pleasant existence, because you're so cut off from the outside. Things like Narcisissicm, psychopathy, or just this generalized lust for power are so consuming that they're ironically sort of self annulling, even while being self involved. It's that kind of paradox.

All that being said, I think the notion of 'power' really desrves and needs more research and further clarification, since we still have a somwhat nebulous understanding of it as psychological phenomena. I'd be curious how it is involved with things like language and one's own ability to understand and cognize through linguistic aspects of sociality.

Privilege allows you to avoid unfavorable environments and narrows the range of people in your social network.

If you are fortunate to have all your meals delivered and/or prepared, you may find it hard to empathize with essential [grocery] workers because you do not see their everyday struggle. When you are able to drive wherever necessary for work, you may find it hard to empathize with people who take public transportation.

The reverse could be true, but often times because someone lacks privilege they are understanding of others struggles... excluding when people trick themselves into believe bootstrap rhetoric.

Then add in some survival bias and individualism and you can clearly see how power distorts ones perception.

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I'd wager it goes beyond even the particulars in social experience, in that it isn't necessarily about who you're not thinking or caring about - it's that by limiting one's vectors for exposure to varying stimuli, the capacity for cognitive growth is limited. Like, who would be more cognitively developed, the person who eventually shuts themselves away in a small inner circle and lives in a castle, or the person who has spent their life around tons of different types of people and experiences. Not that this would be limited to people with power, but power does seem to be something that would be conducive to enabling these kinds of limitations as it's a very interiorizing type of affect.

 

[R.P. McMurphy]

That title is incredibly misleading. Experiences, like being in positions of power, can lead to changes in the brain. This is absolutely not the same as "causing brain damage."

 

[Tuorom]

huh interesting

I hope I can keep my empathy when I become responsible for doling out duties. Sometimes the stress of responsibility gets to you.

Hmm I wonder if this applies to just perceived superiority? For example, on forums it is easy to think you know more than another poster and perhaps that is a negative influence on your mental health. Or maybe not a negative but thinking about it, it is harder to empathize with someone whom you believe you are more right, more knowledgeable, etc. You lose that "mirroring" as it says because you focus on what you know predominantly. Taking charge takes away something. Which is why that attitude/leadership style is better for dangerous situations since you need to make quick decisions and not consider people as much as the incoming danger. But then when this leadership is in "normal" situations you get bosses who don't care about you.

Which means there is a lot of benefit in mental exercises like meditation where you can become beyond yourself. And that certain states of mind would be most beneficial like being non-materialistic. We did have that thread about living minimally and removing things you don't need and how people feel much better afterwards. This kind of mindset is less....selfish, you don't want (perceived power through material gain?) but enjoy what you have.

But then there is power in being more secure with yourself. I guess there's a spectrum and you always have to be checking yourself you aren't swinging into pretention or self-absorbed importance or something.

/Thoughts

 

[mclem]

I'd be interested to hear if power conferred through privilege - which isn't necessarily perceived as power by the person involved - has that effect, because it would explain an awful lot about people persisting in not seeing the privilege they have.

 

[Gio]

People like to trot Bill Gates out as the exception to the rule but he's just as psychotically ruthless as the rest of them. You don't get to accumulate incredible profit and therefore power in the process without deliberately exploiting multitudes of workers. The man's just savvy enough to invest in his PR, that's why he set up the Gates foundation and has Netflix shows about him.

 

[Sesha]

I remember reading about this when this study came out.

Also I love how there's people disputing this acting like they know better, ironically. Every thread about a study no matter what there's always a bunch of people going "hmm, well, no, akhshually...".

 

[Septimus Prime]

Hmm I wonder if this applies to just perceived superiority? For example, on forums it is easy to think you know more than another poster and perhaps that is a negative influence on your mental health. Or maybe not a negative but thinking about it, it is harder to empathize with someone whom you believe you are more right, more knowledgeable, etc. You lose that "mirroring" as it says because you focus on what you know predominantly. Taking charge takes away something. Which is why that attitude/leadership style is better for dangerous situations since you need to make quick decisions and not consider people as much as the incoming danger. But then when this leadership is in "normal" situations you get bosses who don't care about you.

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I think this is key. At its basest form, power is authority over others, and those with the authority mentally have to set themselves apart to justify why they have it.

 

[kamikazety]

You can't lose what you never had.

 

[Halbrand]

Power

Not even once

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[hateradio]

Zuckerberg, Trump, McConnell, Barr, Dejoy, Devos, Miller, etc.

Racism is also a cancer on the brain.

So it double and triple checks out!

 

[Terrell]

No better reason to destroy classism and de-segregate the population could be given than science telling us it has perilous consequences to our sometimes tenuous claim to human morality.

Don't buy it. These people lacked empathy and people skills before gaining power. People who seek power are already fucked up, they don't become that way after the fact.

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Do you not consider the wealth and societal advantages *coughwhiteprivilegecough* that many of these people had before gaining power are power in and of themselves? Hierarchal power structures exist even at the bottom of the food chain and they're compelling enough to be considered an amuse bouche for more and further separation from other people.