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Stanford Social Innovation Review

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Upfront

The Crown Weighs Heavily on the Eyelids

Why the powerful have a hard time taking other peoples

perspectives

By Alana Conner Snibbe

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Spring 2007

Copyright 2007 by Leland Stanford Jr. University

All Rights Reserved

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www.ssireview.org spr ing 2007 / STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW 17

upfrontRESEARCH NEWS

In early 1997, Robert L. Crandall infu-riated a lot of flyboys and flygirls. Thechairman and CEO of American Air-lines accepted a substantial pay raiseat the same time that he voted to cutpilots pay. In response, the pilotsunion called a strike, and President

Bill Clinton had to intervene to quellthe unrest.Crandalls actions are a classic

example of a powerful person failingto take the perspectives of others, saysAdam D. Galinsky, a professor atNorthwestern Universitys KelloggSchool of Management. In a recent

Psychological Science (vol. 17, no. 12)article, Galinsky and his colleaguesdemonstrate that this kind of power-induced narcissism is rather common.Being in power makes you focus on

your own needs and desires, ratherthan the needs and desires of thosearound you, he explains.

To test this idea, the researchersrandomly assigned undergraduatestudents to either a high-power orlow-power group in a series of experi-ments. Those in the high-powergroup wrote about a time when theyhad power over others. Those in thelow-power group wrote about a timewhen others had power over them.

Participants then completed tasksthat measured how much they consid-ered other peoples viewpoints. Forexample, in the Drawing an E exper-iment, researchers asked participantsto write the capital letter E on theirown foreheads. Some participantsdrew Es that felt right from their ownvantage point, but that looked back-wards to onlookers that is, they drewself-oriented Es. Others drew Es that

felt backwards to them but that lookedcorrect to other people that is, theydrew other-oriented Es. More than adecades worth of studies have shownthat people who draw self-oriented Esthink and care less about other peo-ples points of view than do people

who draw other-oriented Es.The researchers found that almost

three times as many participants inthe high-power group drew self-ori-ented Es on their foreheads as didparticipants in the low-power one.Their other experiments similarlyrevealed that participants in the high-power group were worse at guessinghow people would interpret an

ambiguous e-mail, or how others inphotographs were feeling. In total,the experiments suggest that higher-power people have more difficultydeciphering the thoughts, feelings,and desires of others than do lower-power people.

A strength of these studies is thatthey experimentally manipulate peo-ples sense of their own status, saysGalinsky. In the real world, more- and

The Crown Weighs Heavily on the EyelidsWhy the powerful have a hard time taking other peoples perspectives

CARTOON

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007FRANKCOTHAM/

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Power is the gas, but

perspective-taking is

the steering wheel. If

you dont take other

peoples perspectives,

you crash into things.

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