Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, now embroiled in allegations that he tried to flog to sell President-elect Barack Obama's former Senate seat, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign after it was revealed he was Client No. 9 in a high-end prostitution ring, have both been nominated in a poll as the two naughtiest politicians for 2008.
But Spitzer and Blagojevich probably have more in common than that. According to Kellog School's ethics professor Adam Galinsky, it's all about people's susceptibility to get drunk on power.
As Galinksy explains here, it's not really about power's ability to corrupt. It's more about the way power amplifies and reveals our true character. And that came out with very strongly with the two governors.
"Power has two primary effects," Galinsky says. "It really reveals the truth about who people are, and it alters basic psychological processes. It affects the relative activation of two primary neuropsychological systems, what people call the approach system and the inhibition system. The two systems combine to regulate behavior. What research shows is that power enhances or increases the action of the behavioral approach system, but it decreases the inhibition system."
Translated, that means power can make you more action-oriented, and more inclined to take risks because you start believing your own propaganda that you're invincible. But at the same time, that can create blind spots where you don't see how your actions will get you in trouble.
Of course, this applies not only to politics but to business as well. That's why high flyers, from Jeff Skilling to Conrad Black who had all the money and success in the world, couldn't hold themselves back. Which in turn raises questions about the system that produces these sorts of people.
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