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When thinking about power and corruption in particular, I was reminded of the Stanford Prison Experiment. I think that it’s incredibly relevant to the idea of corruption in particular. Also when considering the experiment I was reminded of a video I had watched a while ago about how there were other factors that weren’t documented that actually had a major effect on the experiment. Now I don’t know how much of that is true or speculation or if I am remembering incorrectly, but I want to look into it more to see if there are any interesting outcomes.
As I began my research, I decided a good jumping off point would be The Stanford Historical Societies 50 year reflection on the Stanford Prison Experiment with the man who ran it. There was a lot of interesting and relevant information within this video.
One point in this video that stood out was around 16 minutes in when Zimbardo mentioned the role of acting within this experiment. It was an interesting perspective switch for me when he explained how the guards started out feeling as though they were actors, acting for a particular outcome. While this statement has been used to discredit this experiment in the past, Zimbardo noted that with all acting (professional, circumstancial, etc.) there is a moment when the show is over and the way in which you act is no longer able to be considered curated for a “role.” In his mind, no matter how aware they were of their role within the experiment, at some point, their actions became natural and their thought processes changed. I don’t consider this to be an airtight argument but it is definitely an intersting point to consider, especially when taking this idea out of the context of the experiment and into the real world.
For example, we all do a level of acting on a daily basis as we navigate through our lives. I want to try and actively pay more attention to the moments when I can reflect and know that I am filling a specific role vs. when my genuine self is the one in control.
This next video that I watched looked at experiments that analyzed perceived power in relationship to acting within ones own self-interest. I thought that the conclusion of this video was interesting, noting that power doesn’t necessarily corrupt our morality but rather breaks down our ability to act unselfishly, causing our selfish instincts to take over.
While this point is seemingly obvious I think it is important to consider in order to remind ourselves of our instinctual nature. Without addressing this as a problem that we need to work to actively counteract with our actions, we will continue to see selfish behavior from people in power that ends up harming a significant portion of the population.
From here I began looking into academic journals and other scholarly material to get a better grasp at how and why absolte power corrupts absolutely. I found that Power and Corruption by Úbeda F and Duéñez-Guzmán was a good resource for better understanding why power corrupts and what factors lead people to succumb to their own selfishness and self-interest. The abstract of this article is pasted into the right column for future reference.
A Tale of Two Quotes: When Power "Corrupts" and When It Triggers "Great Responsibility" by Sabey is also a good resource for understanding how the amount of power one is given correlates with the amount of corrupt behavior they are willing to take in. I have pasted in the abstact for future reference when considering ideas surrounding power and corruption.
Mind map of the connections between greed, power, and corruption. I found that each of these things were inherently driven by money, making money the seemingly most important factor when considering these three topics.
These are some questions that came up, as well as some of the ideas for further research that I found to be the most interesting and relevant to the topic at hand.
“Cooperation is ubiquitous in the natural world. What seems nonsensical is why natural selection favors a behavior whereby individuals would lose out by benefiting their competitor. This conundrum, for almost half a century, has puzzled scientists and remains a fundamental problem in biology, psychology, and economics. In recent years, the explanation that punishment can maintain cooperation has received much attention. Individuals who punish noncooperators thrive when punishment does not entail a cost to the punisher. However when punishment is costly, cooperation cannot be preserved. Most literature on punishment fails to consider that punishers may act corruptly by not cooperating when punishing noncooperators. No research has considered that there might be power asymmetries between punishers and nonpunishers that turn one of these type of individuals more or less susceptible to experiencing punishment. Here, we formulate a general game allowing corruption and power asymmetries between punishers and nonpunishers. We show that cooperation can persist if punishers possess power and use it to act corruptly. This result provides a new interpretation of recent data on corrupt policing in social insects and the psychology of power and hypocrisy in humans. These results suggest that corruption may play an important role in maintaining cooperation in insects and human societies. In contrast with previous research, we contend that costly punishment can be beneficial for social groups. This work allows us to identify ways in which corruption can be used to the advantage of a society.“
Abstract of Úbeda, F., & Duéñez-Guzmán, E. A. (2011). Power and Corruption. Evolution, 65(4), 1127–1139. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01194.x
Two seemingly contradictory quotes can be cited in the power literature. The first - and most traditionally held assumption by early power scholars - is attributed to the 19th century British politician Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The other has more ambiguous roots (French Revolution, Voltaire, Churchill, Roosevelt, Uncle Ben Parker, etc.): "With great power comes great responsibility." Though the notion that power corrupts seems to be the status quo, there are instances when individuals use their power for good. This begs the questions, why and when does power corrupt and why and when does it trigger great responsibility? To answer these questions, I draw from theorizing on cognitive morality (e.g., Kohlberg, 1976) and attribution theorizing (e.g., Heider, 1958) to argue that peoples' reactions to having power - specifically self-/other-focused behaviors - depends on power attribution. Furthermore, I suggest that peoples' reactions to power can be explained by where they direct their sense of responsibility - towards themselves (resulting in self-interested behaviors) or towards others (resulting in more other-interested behaviors). Moreover, behaviors directed towards others can be further understood by distinguishing the target (e.g., prosocial behaviors towards a specific individual or individuals vs. prosocial behavior towards the community or society at large). Using a multi-time period study design and structural equation modeling, I demonstrate that when powerholders attribute their power internally, they tend to participate in more self-interested work behaviors, but when they attribute their power externally, they tend to participate in more global prosocial behaviors.
Abstract from Sabey, T. (2021). A Tale of Two Quotes: When Power “Corrupts” and When It Triggers “Great Responsibility.” Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2021(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.15941abstract