Research on power teaches why Blagojevich did what he did (…and why he might get away with It). (2010)

“The powerful often egregiously overstep sacred bounds of public and private trust, only to be consistently forgiven. This “power tango” is driven by a unique brew of intoxication.

Adam Galinsky,
Huffington Post, 23 August 2010

In December 9, 2008, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested on federal corruption charges. On August 17, 2010, a hung jury failed to convict him on all but one of the 24 allegations.

Why would a person so blatantly defy the law (at least from the public’s overwhelmingly consistent perspective), even when he suspected he was being watched, and how is it possible he might walk?

Research my colleagues and I have conducted over the past decade sheds light on this all too common phenomenon. The powerful often egregiously overstep sacred bounds of public and private trust, only to be consistently forgiven, with their trespasses forgotten. I call this dance the “power tango,” and it is driven by a unique brew of intoxication.

Experiencing power seems to almost instantly impair an individual’s ability to appreciate the perspectives of others. Power makes people psychologically invisible. Liberated from the suffocating stares from others, the powerful do whatever they want. As Plato pointed out, when we are invisible there is no constraint on satisfying our basest desires.

This sense of invisibility makes the powerful feel entitled–as my work with Joris Lammers of Tilburg University demonstrates–entitled to cheat and take what they want. Remarkably this sense of entitlement turns the powerful into hypocrites. At the same time they are acting immorally, they feel entitled to espouse a strict standard of morality and self-discipline on others.

Read the full article here: Research on power

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