Whether on the basketball court or in the office, psychology says that powerful people do strange, unrestrained things
Lachlan Cunningham/Getty ImagesKyle Lowry and Mark Stevens at Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday, June 5.
- Power changes the way people think.
- It happens with structural power or temporary power.
- The "most nefarious part" is dehumanization.
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Goals.
Instruments.
Objects.
These are some of the classifications that, in recent years, psychological studies have used to describe the mental states of powerful people when they're considering other human beings.
"A growing literature shows that power energizes thought, speech, and action and orients individuals toward salient goals linked to power roles, predispositions, tasks, and opportunities," a recent review paper stated. "Power magnifies self-expression ... enhancing confidence, self-regulation, and prioritization of efforts toward advancing focal goals."
The pattern doesn't just apply to those who enjoy the structural power of a top job, but to people simply made to feel powerful in a given experiment, like by recalling a time they felt in control of a situation.
"The point is that power moves people in some predictable directions on average," Joe Magee, a New York University psychologist who studies the psychological effects of power, told Business Insider in a phone interview. It's not so much a bias, he's careful to note, but a cognitive tendency or propensity.
"Power affects the balance of attention of self versus others and also the kind of attention that you pay," he says. "The most nefarious part is this dehumanization: you ascribe less human emotions to other people, and objectification, which is some combination of seeing people as less human and seeing people as instrumental in satisfying the goals you have."
The implications: If you're a billionaire or a CEO, you're likely to think of the people around you in terms of how they can serve your goals, rather than appreciating the intricacies of their felt experience.
Which brings us to the shove heard around the world.
In Wednesday night's NBA Finals matchup, the venture capitalist and Golden State Warriors minority owner Mark Stevens shoved Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry after he dove into the stands after a loose ball. Lowry immediately asked that he be ejected.
The NBA and the Warriors followed it up with a $500,000 fine.
"I'm inclined to say his power (social class + networks) afforded him the opportunity to sit courtside, which of course puts him in a position to shove (or to help a guy get up who has fallen to the seats)," Magee in an email followup to Business Insider.
"It was probably... adrenaline or something else that led to the shove," he added.
Power and adrenaline: that's a game-changing cocktail.