People in Power Make Better Liars

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MSNBC– New York Gov. David Paterson is embroiled in a scandal over whether he used his power and influence to intimidate a woman pursuing a domestic violence case against one of his top aides.

As a result, the governor said last month that he would not seek a second term, and his communications director quit earlier this month, citing “integrity” issues.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who went to prison after the spectacular collapse of the company, is appealing to the Supreme Court his 2006 conviction on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying.

His lawyers argue that he didn’t get a fair trial and that Skilling’s conduct, “even if wrongful in some way,” was not illegal because he was not looking out for his personal interests “apart from his normal compensation incentives.”

The issue of integrity is at the heart of the predicaments these powerful men find themselves in. An organization’s health often hinges on the trustworthiness of its leaders, ethics experts say.

There’s old saying: power corrupts. A new Columbia Business School study titled “People with Power are Better Liars” finds there may be truth behind the cliché.

“People in power are able to lie better,” said Dana Carney, a management professor at Columbia Business School and one of the co-authors of the study. “It just doesn’t hurt them as much to do it.”

Read more at MSNBC.

Eve Tahmincioglu writes the weekly “Your Career” column for msnbc.com and chronicles workplace issues in her blog, CareerDiva.net.

© MSNBC, 2010

 

One thought on “People in Power Make Better Liars

  1. Great article! But the authors did not go far enough. How about a comparative psychological study of those people to diagnose the conditions that allow some to lie and prevent others from lying?

    This brings to mind “Political Ponerology” by Andrew Lobaczewski. Lobaczewski worked as a psychologist in Soviet-dominated Poland. He and a few of his colleagues secretly—and dangerously—psychoanalyzed their society and concluded that their rulers were essential psychopaths. Essential psychopaths—like Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush—completely miss the ability to empathize with fellow human beings, due to their genetic inheritance. Most are male. Their natural vocation is to be predators, and their prey is the human society. As young children, their extremely egocentric and systematically evil behavior earns them punishments and admonishments. They quickly learn to don the so-called “Cleckley mask” of sanity, pretending to be psychologically normal. At the same time, they develop—understandably—an extreme frustration against what they perceive as the implacable tyranny of the psychologically normal majority. Not unlike gays and lesbians, they also develop a cunning ability to identify and recognize each other without being detected by normal people. If and when they band together, they can wreak extreme havoc, especially if they develop goals of ruling over the normal people and imposing “their” system of justice. Their “special knowledge” of their difference gives them an edge over the normal majority.

    Essential psychopaths, once in power, use doublespeak to recruit their kin. One recent example is Lieberman’s call to strip some possible criminals from their U.S. citizenship. Normal people tend to interpret this using morality: “Lieberman suffers from a distorted vision of reality or fear of voters.” They will reject his idea or propose that it be modified, based on rational arguments. Essential psychopaths understand Lieberman’s doublespeak and react differently: “Lieberman is one of us; he’s got power; if we want power over these bad ‘normal’ people, let’s join him.”

    Corporations that preach unbridled ambition—with unrealistic yet catchy slogans such as “anybody can reach the top through enough determination”—may very well be inviting essential psychopaths to join them and may have discrete human resources tools in place to make them go up the ranks.

    According to Lobaczewski, one important goal of the Soviet propaganda—understood by neither the normal Soviet people nor by Westerners—was to “fish” essential psychopaths out of the general public, so they could be invited to join the ruling class.

    Lobaczewski’s editor also wonders if the official terminology of psychology in the USA has been deliberately muddled so as to make it difficult to identify essential psychopaths. Oh well…

    Love,

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