Power Kills Empathy

Why are we inundated with lying, corrupt, greedy, immoral, uncaring leaders? How can ICE agents be so cruel? Why is there still police brutality? Why do we elect and follow immoral people? How many media moguls have crashed and burned because of their misogyny? What’s with all these religious leaders caught in scandals? Are these anomalies – a few bad apples? Or is something deeper going on?

Some of these toxic people undoubtedly started out as sociopaths, incapable of feeling empathy, but certainly not all of them. Many powerful people began as normal, humble folks who intuitively cared for others. As they rose in power, however, their empathy was lost. Research shows that once power is gained, empathy fades. When imaged, the brains of powerful people closely resemble those of psychopaths and those who have suffered damage to the frontal lobe, which is the seat of empathy.

With a few exceptions that prove the rule, the most powerful among us are the least empathetic. Media executives, C-suite occupants, megachurch pastors, masked ICE agents, and high-level politicians are too often notorious for their profound lack of empathy, which is one of the reasons why such people are too often involved in scandals. For them, others are objects; others are simply means to be used toward the leaders’ ends.

Generally speaking, to rise to power in any modern institution or governmental entity, one must have an outsize ego, a fiercely competitive personality, a ton of ambition, and (too often) a willingness to justify the means by the end goal of personal achievement and recognition. Once in power, most powerful people seek to expand and perpetrate their power. We wind up with presidents and senators for life, CEO pastors void of oversight, and a billionaire class oblivious to the needs of average people. Even in a hospital setting where one would think compassion would reign, it is commonly known that the MBAs in the C-Suite wouldn’t recognize a patient if they fell over one.

How do people in power justify extravagant salaries, benefits, perks, golden parachutes, expensive cars, private jets, multiple houses, free world travel, lucrative jobs for family members, unlimited expense accounts, private body guards, legal fixers, personal shoppers, and boards of directors made up of hand-picked sycophants who rubber-stamp whatever the head man (it’s still mostly white men) wants? How can politicians who cut off aid to starving and food insecure children sleep at night?

Power is not limited to presidents and billionaires. Studies have shown that the act of donning a police uniform can adversely affect a person’s ability to care. How do officers sworn to uphold the law justify snatching parents away from children and shipping people to foreign cages without due process?

“Ordinary people can get intoxicated by power or powerful roles. Just temporarily wearing a power-symbolizing uniform can re-code brain processes to create a new mindset.

“The brains of powerful individuals react differently to social cues in ways that resemble psychopaths or patients with frontal brain damage. Psychopaths and some patients with brain damage lack empathy and the ability to take others’ perspectives. Research has shown that power can deform the brain to act in the same ways. For example, people with high status have been shown to be less accurate in judging the emotions of people with low status.”

Armies throughout history have committed atrocities. People given that kind of power do things collectively they would likely never do individually. Imagine what happens when you arm an entire nation without any restrictions and pass “stand your ground” laws.

In order to rise in power and stay in power, empathy has to go.

“Historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, when he described power as “a sort of tumour 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 study spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury – becoming more impulsive, less risk averse, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other peoples’ point of view.

“Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University in Ontario, recently described something similar. … when he put the heads of the powerful and 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 ...”

Power deforms human brains. The brains of powerful people look like the brains of psychopaths. Power kills sympathy. Power causes empathy to leak out of us. Powerful people lose the ability to see things from the point of view of others. Powerful people lose the ability to care.

As Lord Acton famously put it, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”

Elsewhere, he said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

“Great men are almost always bad men.”

“Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

A society that doesn’t care for its most vulnerable citizens is a society corrupt to its core.

So, are we doomed to be lorded over by toxic narcissistic psychopaths? No, not if we can learn to follow the example of Jesus.

In Jesus we see one who wielded enormous power yet was filled with deep compassion and empathy. He exercised divine power over nature (water to wine, calming storms), over strong evil spiritual forces (casting out demons, resisting temptation), and over all manner of sickness and disability. He deeply felt the pain of others.

When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  (Matthew 9:36, NRSVUE)

“Harassed and helpless are also variously translated “scattered,” “distressed,” “dejected,” “harried,” “downcast,” “confused,” “worried,” “weary,” “dispirited,” “abused,” “cast aside,” “heartbroken.” The first of those Greek words, ἐσκυλμένοι, means to flay or lacerate. The second, ἐρριμμένοι, means to hurl or cast down.

Jesus saw poor oppressed people as if they were slashed, wounded, bleeding, languishing sheep that had suffered an attack by predators. In this case, the predators were religious leaders, politicians, and militant enforcers. He longed to enfold and care for them.

How was it that Jesus could simultaneously exercise enormous power yet remain deeply humble and empathetic?

He lived in constant connectedness with God. God is perfect self-sacrificial love. God speaks tenderness, mercy, grace, and forgiveness over all creation, over every person. No exceptions. Through prayer, contemplation, and frequent retreats, Jesus lived in contact with the God of perfect love. Filled with divine love, power had no corrupting influence on him.

With God’s help, we can do the same.

References

1. Avila, Marian, The Dark Side of Dominance: How Power Rewires Your Brain and Erodes Empathy. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-dark-side-of-dominance-how-power-rewires-your-brain-and-erodes-empathy/ar-AA1Iukb2

2. Azab, Marwa, The Brain Under the Influence of Power. Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neuroscience-in-everyday-life/202006/the-brain-under-the-influence-power

3. Galinsky, A.D., Magee, J.C., Inesi, M.E., & Gruenfeld, D.H. (2006). Power and perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17 (12), 1068-1074.

4. Guinote, A. (2007b). Power and goal pursuit. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1076-1087.

5. Hogeveen, J., Inzlicht, M. & Obhi, S.S. (2014). Power changes how the brain responds to others. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 143 (2), 755-762.

6. Lammers, J., Galinsky, A.D., Dubois, D., & Rucker, D.D. (2015). Power and morality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 15-19.

7. Useem, Jerry Power Causes Brain Damage. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/

8. van Kleef, G. A., Oveis, C., Homan, A. C., van der Löwe, I. & Keltner, D. (2015). Power gets you high: The powerful are more inspired by themselves than by others. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6 (4), 472–480.

9. van Kleef, G.A., Oveis, C., van der Löwe, I., LuoKogan, A., Goetz, J., & Keltner, D. (2008). Power, distress, and compassion: Turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. Psychological Science, 19 (12), 1315-1322.