Experienced leader

Power changes a person beyond recognition. You can watch it in the lab.

Notes from a professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, Adam Galinsky, students received in sealed envelopes. “You were appointed leader of the group,” the scientist reported. “The duties of subordinates and the amount of their remuneration are now determined only by you.” These were the results of a test that had ended just an hour ago. The psychologist recruited participants for his new experiment. The test subjects had to work in groups and solve a variety of problems. The volunteers were to be coordinated by specially appointed leaders - the most capable of the students. In order for the scientist to select the best, the volunteers had to pass a real test.

Galinsky deceived his wards. In fact, absolutely nothing depended on the test result - no one checked them. The scientist chose the winners of the competition at random. But not only that, every second participant in the experiment received congratulatory notes. The psychologist sought one thing: the elect should feel their own importance. Galinsky studied how a person is affected by a sense of his own power. It turned out that even very conditional “appointments” make people more decisive.

This experiment is already seven years old. Now such experiments have become a very popular direction in psychology. In 2007, scientists proved that high status affects how the human brain perceives information. And more recently, a work has appeared that proves that a sense of power, albeit a formal one, makes people behave immorally, for example, to steal.

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However, Galinsky did not go that far in his research. He decided to test the patience of his wards. The scientist's assistants led his wards to separate rooms. There, the students were seated at a table and forced to fill out questionnaires. All this time, Galinsky observed the behavior of the participants in the experiment using a hidden camera. The psychologist had something to look at. The fact is that there was a fan on the table in front of each test subject. The device worked at maximum speed and was located so that the air jet hit right in the eyes - it was very annoying.

Many students were timid and did not turn off the device. More determined participants in the experiment moved the fan to the far corner of the table or simply pulled it out of the socket. Most often, it was precisely those volunteers whom the psychologist had previously “appointed” as bosses who did this. They were helped by the consciousness of their own importance.

This feeling can affect not only the character, says Anna Ginot, a psychologist from the British University of Kent. In 2007, she proved that even simple thoughts about power affect how the human brain processes information. The researcher instructed her students to write a short essay. Volunteers had to remember and put down on paper several events from their lives. The psychologist suggested that half of the participants in the experiment write about cases when the people around them obeyed their decisions. Other wards recalled less pleasant stories when they themselves had to follow someone else's will.

After that, another task awaited the volunteers. On the screen in front of them, letters appeared and disappeared at great speed. The test subjects had to have time to identify these symbols and give an oral answer. Ginot has made this task more difficult with a simple trick. The letters appearing on the monitor, in turn, consisted of other characters. For example, "E" was drawn with many small "A". This was supposed to constantly distract the participants in the experiment. The volunteers, who thought about their own power, completed the task faster than their colleagues - they recognized letters on average thirty milliseconds faster. “All indications are that these participants in the experiment had an increased ability to focus on the task,” Ginot explains. A simple reminder of power turned out to be a good incentive.

But in a new paper that will be published soon, the researcher describes an unpleasant side effect of such self-confidence. Ginot made the participants of the experiment perform simple tasks on the computer. Previously, her wards underwent psychological treatment - they wrote essays, like last time. The researcher then introduced the volunteers to the tasks and asked them to estimate how long it would take them to solve. Guinot's test subjects all turned out to be optimists as one - their assessments differed markedly from reality. But it was precisely those participants in the experiment whom the psychologist made to feel important for a while that overestimated themselves the most. "That's an instructive observation," Guinot muses. “Something similar is probably happening in the real world.”

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Not only do people begin to overestimate themselves by thinking about their own importance, they also stop paying attention to others. This was proved in her study by the American psychologist Judith Hall. She divided the volunteers into pairs and made them act out short skits. One of the participants in the tandem posed as the owner of an art gallery, and the other - his subordinate. Together they had to select several exhibits for the new exhibition. For greater certainty, the psychologist provided the volunteers with reproductions of paintings, and they seriously argued about the artistic merits of each of them. All this time, a hidden camera was watching Hall's wards.

After the participants of the experiment finished this performance, the researcher turned to them with an unexpected request. Volunteers had to remember how the interlocutor behaved. Then the researcher compared the received descriptions of manners and gestures with the video recording. It turned out that the behavior of partners is best remembered by the experimental subjects who were in a subordinate position. But the bosses, apparently, did not pay special attention to their colleagues. This is no coincidence, says Hall. Closely monitor the behavior of others - the lot of those who have a low social status. So, at least, things are the closest relatives of people - primates. Dominant individuals in a pack rarely honor their subordinates with special attention.

“Hierarchy remains of great importance in human society,” agrees Joris Lammers, a psychologist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He admits that all the observations of his colleagues can be explained by the evolutionary past of man. Lammers himself is a political scientist by training. He became interested in psychology later. “There are many historical examples of how power changes people's behavior,” says the scientist. - Once I became interested: what if there really is a system in this?

In recent work, the scientist clearly confirmed his assumption. He divided his charges into small groups and chose leaders. Subjects worked together to solve a variety of problems. And then the scientist paid each of them a monetary reward. Its size was determined by the participants of the experiment. To do this, they threw a dice several times. The points that fell out were added up, and the size of the fee due to the volunteers depended on this amount.

The scientist did not specifically follow the course of the draw, it was a real provocation. His wards themselves entered the result in the questionnaires, and then received money. Later, Lammers compared the successes of superiors and subordinates. It turned out that the leaders often indicated suspiciously high results on their forms. “Of course, this can be attributed to the fact that they were all phenomenally lucky then,” laughs Lammers. “But there is a more obvious explanation.” The participants in the experiment who received “power” were not going to participate in it on a common basis. They broke the rules and rewarded themselves as they saw fit.