2. Does power lead to corruption? Scientific research shows that, whatever an individual’s personality type, power leads to antisocial decisions – and testosterone plays an important part too. By John Antonakis.

A few years ago, after a debate over the presidential elections in the USA, a journalist and I began to discuss the case of former Italian prime-minister Silvio Berlusconi. The journalist wanted me to explain why Berlusconi was so power-hungry; what factors might explain his character and his sexual escapades?

I did not want to answer. It was too big a question. However, after persistent questioning, I blurted out a response: “I don’t know. Maybe it is because of his testosterone?”

We know that the hormone testosterone indicates reduced empathy and increased antisocial behaviour, as well as controlling sexual behaviour. So when planning a study on corrupt leaders with my colleagues, I thought it might be interesting to measure testosterone too.

Does power corrupt?
Answering this question is not easy. It is possible that power corrupts, but it is also possible that some individuals seek power because they are already corrupt at heart. We were therefore interested to see if stable qualities that we could measure, such as personality (for example, honesty) or physical factors (such as testosterone levels), mattered for corruption.

To know whether power does corrupt we had to manipulate power; we gave power to a random group of participants and observed how they behaved. We ensured we had roughly equal numbers of similar individuals (honest, smart, corrupt, men, women, etc) in our groups.

We set up two experiments. Participants played what is called a dictator game. The dictator, referred to as the “leader” in the experiment, could decide how to share a sum of money between themselves, and their team. They had to make choices between serving the greater good – doing what’s right for public welfare by increasing the team’s payout – or serving oneself, by increasing their own payout but destroying public welfare.

We also manipulated the number of followers for each leader: the leaders either had one follower (low-power leaders), or several (high-power leaders). We then allowed the leaders to take decisions about payouts.

What did we find?
In the first experiment, results showed that high-power leaders took antisocial decisions at a significantly higher rate than low-power leaders.

Before becoming leaders or followers, we asked participants to vote on what a responsible leader should do with their payouts. Most endorsed the more social option; just 3.33% said that leaders should take antisocial decisions.

Yet, when they became leaders, participants succumbed to the corruptive effects of power. Interestingly, even the most honest individuals, in time, slid down the slippery, corrupting slope of power. Even more interesting was our observation that those who had high levels of testosterone were most corrupt when they had high power.

Our findings have important implications for the design of institutions. Leaders prefer to have the power to make their own decisions and lots of discretion. Yet we know from our study, and others too, that power can go to leaders’ heads.

TASK: List 3 findings from the study. (AO1)
Enter your answer
4.Complete the following statements using as much as you’ve learned about power as possible... (AO1&3). You must use the following words:
ambition, corruption, status, testosterone and succumbed

Power is...…

Power can

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