Social power and morality
The following is taken from the graduation speech of Michael Lewis at Princeton in 2012. In it, he discusses an experiment that explores the relationship between power and morality.
“…… a pair of researchers in the Cal psychology department staged an experiment. They began by grabbing students, as lab rats. Then they broke the students into teams, segregated by sex. Three men, or three women, per team. Then they put these teams of three into a room, and arbitrarily assigned one of the three to act as leader. Then they gave them some complicated moral problem to solve: say what should be done about academic cheating, or how to regulate drinking on campus.
Exactly 30 minutes into the problem-solving the researchers interrupted each group. They entered the room bearing a plate of cookies. Four cookies. The team consisted of three people, but there were these four cookies. Every team member obviously got one cookie, but that left a fourth cookie, just sitting there. It should have been awkward. But it wasn’t. With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it. Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of the extra cookie were crumbs on the leader’s shirt.
This leader had performed no special task. He had no special virtue. He’d been chosen at random, 30 minutes earlier. His status was nothing but luck. But it still left him with the sense that the cookie should be his.”
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We’ve probably all heard the saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Well, there is a great deal of research concerning the link between social power and morality, and most of it suggests that absolute power is not required to change people’s morals; sadly it tends to show that more power leads to less care for others, and less moral behavior.
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
Here in Portugal we tend to say about someone that gain a little bit of power and then goes on to become corrupt (even if just a little) that all it takes is a “crumb of power” (“migalhas de poder” is the Portuguese expression). Some people seem to spend their lives searching for these little crumbs of power in order to exploit others and just feel good about themselfs. You should come to Portugal sometime. We have excellent politicians to be taken as examples of what it takes to become corrupt – very little I might add.
this is so sad – If I had been leader I would have broken the fourth cookie into three parts and shared it
I have been in many leadership positions and because I do not like the way I have been treated when I was not leader, I inform my leadership with that feeling and work to make everyone in the team feel equally important
we are such fragile creatures – we must look out for others and not just ourselves – I have learned this the hard way – I have had more than my share of selfish “ego” moments -
what is a good behavioural ecomonmics strategy to use when dealing with such a ‘person’, ie: power without prestige
Apparently, this experiment was described in “Ward, G., & Keltner, D. (1998). Power and the consumption of resources.” which was never published… I have been unable to find an online copy. Disappointing.
here’s someone who describes an experiment very much like this – http://blogs.southworks.net/tosborn/2009/06/21/the-cookie-experiment/ – but
a) it’s a team of 3 and there are 5 cookies
b) it’s about the 4th cookie (nobody ever takes the fifth)
c) apparently it’s a team of stanford people not cal psychology
d) leaders were ‘more likely to eat with their mouths open and scattering crumbs widely’, which I found a great bit of detail
but e) google doesn’t seem to be able to find the orginal paper, Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson (2000)
Good find. I suspect the date is wrong, and they mean this one:
Gruenfeld, D. H., Keltner, D., & Anderson, C. (2003). The effects of power upon those who possess it: An interpersonal perspective on social cognition. In G. Bodenhausen & A. Lambert (Eds.), Foundations of social cognition: A festschrift in honor of Robert S. Wyer, Jr. (pp.237-262). Hilldale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Clearly, the teams were young enough so they were still able to eat cookies. Try that with 50-year olds, and you’ll have a plate of cookies left because one person is gluten free, one’s on Atkins, and the other is fasting for a colonoscopy.
Keep up the great posts Dan !
Enjoying your work immensely.
How did they ensure that the “leader” was chosen “arbitrarily”? I suspect subconscious bias (we all have it) might be in play here, causing the person selecting the “leader,” intending to choose “arbitrarily,” to choose on the basis of unconscoiusly recognized fators about the person chosen. Unless they were able to ensure an arbitrary choice somehow.
Dan’s pretty good about covering that sort of challenge (I’d expect to find some random number generator behind the scenes) and also pretty bad about “showing his work,” esp. when it’s someone else’s work that he’s reporting.
I think we all instinctively ‘know’ that leaders are for the most part designated randomly. We can believe in meritocracy but …. that’s another argument. I can tell you for a fact that even if you had crowned me with a leaf of laurels that cookie would have gone uneaten. Not at all because I am made of superior moral fibre but because I had old fashioned British manners drummed into me at great personal pain for all my childhood. Operant conditoning for the win. Now, how that is going to help when dealing with a mini-tyrant in the office I cannot say.
Similarly, I’d wonder if you’d get a different outcome at Tulane or LSU.
I’m a big sports fan and this kind of weird phenomenon is shown quite a lot. http://wagesofwins.com/2012/06/15/who-are-the-nbas-most-overpaid/ – Dave Berri just did a write up of overpaid NBA athletes. Part of being overpaid in sports is due to not knowing the right way to judge statistics.
However, some people will even accept that Kobe Byrant’s statistics are not good. However, they will then explain all of the extra things he does that merit his payday. It seems once someone is given an extra amount of compensation or title that people will retrofit an explanation as to why they deserve it.
When you give a boss a cookie…
Leaders aren’t chose arbitrarily, leaders emerge BECAUSE they are the kind of people that won’t take the fourth cookie. What does this study show? One hypothesis is that, when you pick someone at random with no experience or training in leadership, they’ll eat the fourth cookie because they don’t know any better.
Real leaders lead, this isn’t leading.
Mike, it appears to me that you are falling for the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. If you define “real leaders” as the sort of people who won’t eat the fourth cookie, then you will indeed find that those leaders are the sort of people who won’t eat the fourth cookie.
But, that still leaves this interesting result. Someone who is *appointed arbitrarily* as a leader, and who everyone knows is appointed arbitrarily, behaves differently. Arguably, people expect leaders to behave more selfishly, so when they find themselves in that position they can take advantage of it. (There are other possible explanations: e.g. being leader requires more self-control in other areas, diminishing self-control in this unimportant area.) Either way, it is an interesting result, even if they don’t fit your definition of “real leaders”.
In the military there is a strong emphasis on small group leadership. The magic is visible commitment and responsibility. Young officers are trained vigorously in a leadership ethic that says that the leader takes the hardest task, the biggest risks: sticks his head up to see where the enemy is, stays up all night with the troops repairing the sail plane piston (on a submarine) for a deployment in the morning, eats with the troops in the field, and when the opportunity presents, takes a place in the line moving garbage weights in a dirty and exhausting task they are “supervising.” If your purpose is to get the most out of your team you amplify your “social power” by demonstrated commitment.
@Julian — the paper that summarizes the (unpublished earlier) experiment is Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson, (2003), Power, Approach, and Inhibition. Psychological Review, vol. 110, No. 2. The summary appears at page 277. A copy of this paper can be downloaded from Keltner’s website, http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/dacherkeltner/research.php
Thank you, Scott. That was helpful. I had a look at that paper.
As you point out, it summarises the unpublished manuscript “Ward, G., & Keltner, D. (1998). Power and the consumption of resources”.
It is the most detailed summary I have seen from the three or four places I have seen it cited, but it still isn’t to the level of detail I would like to see when I go to the original source to see if the claims are matched by the evidence.
Based on the summary, and a table included with it, it appears that this “power” effect showed up only in groups of women. (All the experimental groups were same-sex.) It seems that the low-power men ate just as many cookies as the high-power men, right at 1.25 cookies per guy whether they were low or high power guys. But low-power women seem to have eaten about 0.8 cookies each while high-power women seem to have eaten about 1.4.
Thanks for the ideea …will put it to the test today