The Compassionate Instinct

Perhaps more unsettling is the wealth of evidence that having power makes people more likely to act like sociopaths. High-power individuals are more likely to interrupt others, to speak out of turn, and to fail to look at others who are speaking. They are also more likely to tease friends and colleagues in hostile, humiliating fashion. Surveys of organizations find that most rude behaviors—shouting, profanities, bald critiques—emanate from the offices and cubicles of individuals in positions of power. My own research has found that people with power tend to behave like patients who have damaged their brain’s orbitofrontal lobes (the region of the frontal lobes right behind the eye sockets), a condition that seems to cause overly impulsive and insensitive behavior. Thus, the experience of power might be thought of as having someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to empathy and socially appropriate behavior.

Power may induce more harmful forms of aggression as well. In the famed Stanford Prison Experiment, psychologist Philip Zimbardo randomly assigned Stanford undergraduates to act as prison guards or prisoners—an extreme kind of power relation. The prison guards quickly descended into the purest forms of power abuse, psychologically torturing their peers, the prisoners. Similarly, anthropologists have found that cultures where rape is prevalent and accepted tend to be cultures with deeply entrenched beliefs in the supremacy of men over women.

This leaves us with a power paradox. Power is given to those individuals, groups, or nations who advance the interests of the greater good in socially intelligent fashion. Yet unfortunately, having power renders many individuals as impulsive and poorly attuned to others as your garden-variety frontal lobe patient, making them prone to act abusively and lose the esteem of their peers. What people want from leaders—social intelligence—is what is damaged by the experience of power.

When we recognize this paradox and all the destructive behaviors that flow from it, we can appreciate the importance of promoting a more socially intelligent model of power. Social behaviors are dictated by social expectations. As we debunk long-standing myths and misconceptions about power, we can better identify the qualities powerful people should have and better understand how they should wield their power. As a result, we’ll have much less tolerance for people who lead by deception, coercion, or undue force. No longer will we expect these kinds of antisocial behaviors from our leaders and silently accept them when they come to pass.

We’ll also start to demand something more from our colleagues, our neighbors, and ourselves. When we appreciate the distinctions between responsible and irresponsible uses of power—and the importance of practicing the responsible, socially intelligent form of it—we take a vital step toward promoting healthy marriages, peaceful playgrounds, and societies built on cooperation and trust.

EDIBLE ETHICS: AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL POLLAN

Jason Marsh

IT’S NOT UNCOMMON these days to find yourself stranded in a supermarket aisle, paralyzed by the choices before you. How do you decide between the organic eggs laid by cage-free hens and the eggs laid by free-range hens fed on omega-3 fatty acids? Should you really buy that tomato, even though it’s well out of season? Is it worth paying an extra $5 for the sustainably farmed, antibiotic-free chicken breast?

Before trying to answer any of these questions, it would help to read Michael Pollan’s books. For years, eaters have turned to Pollan, a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, for some of the most thoughtful, provocative, and practical contemporary writing on food.

In his 2007 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Pollan attempts to navigate the seemingly endless food choices available to Americans today. Getting past marketing slogans, dietary fads, and cryptic ingredients—what exactly are sodium aluminum sulfate and xanthan gum, and why are they in our food?—he traces our food’s journey from farms and factories, through the marketplace, and onto our plates.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma was a logical successor to Pollan’s previous book, The Botany of Desire, which chronicled the history of humans’ relationship with four common plants. But it might be more appropriately grouped with other books, such as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Marion Nestle’s Food Politics, which try to explain the social and political forces that shape our food’s production, and shed light on the impact our food choices have on our health, our communities, and our planet.