Wired Differently

Power Causes Brain Damage

The article Power Causes Brain Damage from the Atlantic has always stuck with me. Everyone should read this well-researched and thoughtful piece. It gives excellent insight into the extreme behavior we see lately in politicians and CEOs of large companies.

I will summarize:

Mirroring is the unconscious behavior in which a person imitates the gestures, speech patterns, or emotions of another. In other words, when we watch someone perform an action, the part of the brain we would use to do that same thing responds as well. Think, yawning.

Researchers introduced a simple model system. They had their subjects watch a video of someone’s hand squeezing a rubber ball to see how they would respond. For the not-powerful participants, mirroring worked as expected. They would squeeze the ball. Those that were deemed powerful lacked this mirroring response.

If the brain works differently for the people who have power, we have to ask why? When did the change happen? If the automatic response to experience empathy has stopped, what else has?

The article points to a number of leaders that appear to lose their mental capacities for reading other people. As we watch these billionaires (Musk, Zuckerburg, Bezos, etc.), we do have wonder if their brains have…