This is painfully obvious in the modern world

Dec 30, 2009 10:56 GMT  ·  By
Corporate executives continue to fly private jets, spending millions, while reducing benefits for their employees
   Corporate executives continue to fly private jets, spending millions, while reducing benefits for their employees

Psychologists have wondered for a long time how it is that people have the tendency to not practice what they preach. As evidenced by countless new studies, those in a position of power, and who claim a solid moral background, tend to slip up the most, and the hardest. This is clear in the case of politicians, economic leaders and music/film stars. The huge number of scandals that fraught 2009 was a clear indicator of this. But experts wonder what the roots of such behavior are, e! Science News reports.

For example, executives of multinational companies, who claimed that they were trying to make things good for everyone, continued to fly their private jets as they were cutting employee benefits. Claiming to be moral, and then lashing out at those under your command is wrong from many points of view, and denotes selfishness to the highest degree. Others are straight-out hypocrites. For instance, people in the Bible Belt of the US have the highest numbers of subscriptions to adult websites and magazines, all while preaching the word of the Lord, and being highly conservative, intolerant and aggressive towards other religions or people who do no fit their “high standards.”

Scientists at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, who set out to investigate these phenomena, identified power as one of the main factors contributing to this type of behavior. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, an old saying goes, and it unfortunately has held true to this day. In its new paper, entitled “Power Increases Hypocrisy: Moralizing in Reasoning, Immunity and Behavior,” the group tries to make sense of how power influences morals, goodness, kindness, and other positive values. The paper will appear in the upcoming issue of the respected scientific journal Psychological Science.

“This research is especially relevant to the biggest scandals of 2009, as we look back on how private behavior often contradicted the public stance of particular individuals in power. For instance, we saw some politicians use public funds for private benefits while calling for smaller government, or have extramarital affairs while advocating family values. Similarly, we witnessed CEOs of major financial institutions accepting executive bonuses while simultaneously asking for government bailout money on behalf of their companies,” the NU Kellogg School Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management, Adam Galinsky, says.

“Ultimately, patterns of hypocrisy and hypercrisy perpetuate social inequality. The powerful impose rules and restraints on others while disregarding these restraints for themselves, whereas the powerless collaborate in reproducing social inequality because they don't feel the same entitlement,” he concludes.