How Power Affects People
5 Identify the causes and consequences of abuse of power.
To this point, we’ve discussed what power is and how it is acquired. But we’ve not yet answered one important question: Does power corrupt?
There is certainly evidence that there are corrupting aspects of power. Power leads people to place their own interests ahead of others’ needs or goals. Why does this happen? Interestingly, power not only leads people to focus on their self-interests because they can, it liberates them to focus inward and thus come to place greater weight on their own aims and interests. Power also appears to lead individuals to “objectify” others (to see them as tools to obtain their instrumental goals) and to see relationships as more peripheral. ...
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