Sympathy and the Problem With Power

My class is reading the book "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer. The author discusses the different ways our brains work and how those parts of our brain affect our decisions, both large and small. In Chapter 6, The Moral Mind, Lehrer speaks about morality and how it is basically the structure of our brain that helps us make moral decisions. On page 187 Lehrer discusses a built-in problem with sympathy: "Once people become socially isolated, they stop simulating the feelings of other people." This sentence literally stopped me in my tracks. I was stunned by the implications of this simple statement and decided I wanted to know more. Lehrer cites a paper written by UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner in which Keltner discusses how people come into power and how that power then changes them. I read Keltner's paper, titled "The Power Paradox" and found it extremely interesting. Keltner speaks about the positive attributes one must have to take power, things like being able to pick up on the feelings and needs of others, and having social intelligence. The more a person has these positive traits the more likely they are to be put into a position of power. The real problem with power occurs not in gaining power but after having been granted power. Once these people who previously displayed strong levels of sympathizing with others and reconciling conflicts gain power, they seem to lose their ability to do those very things that boosted them into power to begin with. People in positions of power begin to act selfishly, rashly, and without concern for what their subordinates think about their decisions. In some cases this behavior can make for effective leadership, such as being willing to take risks that are necessary to continue to move a business forward. But overall, these traits make them more likely to experience a fall. They tend to end up making poor moral decisions (how many sex scandals do we see in Congress and the White House every year?) and being disliked by the very people who gave them their power to begin with. Keltner believes if we want effective leadership we have to rethink how we view power, how we treat people once they have power, and what behavior we are willing to accept from them. If everyone read this article, I believe we could have a revolution in our thinking. If we stop accepting the bad behavior of the people we grant power to, we could see a completely new way of leading emerge. And if we actually had people in power that we could look up to and respect? The way our country selects leaders and the expectations of those leaders would be dramatically different.