Tayssir
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/25/AR2007112501236.html
With Power Comes a Selfish Point of View
By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Monday, November 26, 2007; Page A03
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Dacher Keltner, a social psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said Galinsky's finding reflects a growing realization that power entails a paradox.
"People in organizations and in hierarchies and in informal groups like college dorms want leaders to be socially intelligent," Keltner said. "They will sacrifice all manner of things to have leaders who are thoughtful and engaged and give other people voice."
But once socially gifted people rise to power, Keltner added, the paradox is that "power simplifies our thinking. We tend to see things in terms of our own self-interest, and it makes us more impulsive. We forget our audience in service of gratifying our own impulses."
Keltner and others have shown that power exacerbates many cognitive biases. People who lack power turn out to be more accurate in guessing the opinions of those around them, whereas those in power tend to be inaccurate. Because subordinates are also hesitant to tell superiors things they do not want to hear, the problem gets worse, with powerful people having even less input and perspective about how others think and feel.
Even U.S. Supreme Court justices, Stanford University psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld found, write more complex arguments when they are in the minority compared with when they are part of the majority.
In some ways, the results should not be surprising: Not having power forces you to see things from other people's points of view and increases empathy and social behavior. Having power allows you to ignore other points of view -- depriving you of the social skills that led to power in the first place. When powerful people such as Musharraf say and do things that are absurd, in other words, it could be that they are simply unaware of how they appear to others.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/25/AR2007112501236.html