Absolute power corrupts a lot less than partial power

It is often observed that the people at the top are bastards, but we forget that the people at the bottom can be even bigger ones, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

LAST WEEK, I turned up at the offices of a well-known company to interview its chief executive.

In reception, a security guard issued me with a pass but refused to let me though the barrier on the grounds that I’d attached it to my bag rather than to my coat.

When I’d moved it as directed, he let me in with the gruff warning that I wouldn’t be allowed out unless the pass was returned to him undamaged. On the other side of the barrier the chief executive waited, all charm and urbanity.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton famously wrote. But I don’t think he got it quite right: power may corrupt, but absolute power corrupts a lot less than partial power – as the story of the CEO and the security guard demonstrates.

This thesis is upheld by a new study showing that people who have a little power but don't have status can behave in nasty ways and get a kick out of demeaning others. The research, to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, describes an experiment in which students were told to issue orders to others.

Those who were assigned low-status roles tended to delight in getting people to do humiliating things – like making them bark like a dog three times – while those in higher status jobs treated them with more respect.

Reading about this experiment took me straight back to a scene of torture and cruelty that took place six weeks ago at Heathrow Airport. I had arrived absurdly early to put my son on a flight to the US, but after an interminable wait at the Delta counter discovered I’d forgotten to get him an electronic visa.

There began a nightmare scramble through the airport to find a computer, to type in the information and finally get the visa. Then, in a torment of travel anxiety, we charged back to the check-in, where a man with a walkie-talkie looked at his watch.

There were still 58 minutes to go before the plane left, but he shook his head: too late. My son wept. I pleaded and grovelled and would have happily barked like a dog.

“I’m sorry, madam,” he said in the least sorry voice I’d ever heard. In his eye was a sadistic gleam.

In telling this tale I am not saying that all people doing lowly roles enjoy lording it over an incompetent, hysterical mother; some of them are remarkably nice.

However, there is a syndrome of lowly nastiness that tends to get overlooked in management theory. It is often observed that the people at the top are bastards, but we forget that the people at the bottom can be even bigger ones.

Which isn’t really very surprising: if I were a security guard or worked in the Hades of Heathrow, I’d be pretty horrid too.

The researchers argue that the best way of discouraging tyranny lower down the pecking order is to make sure that the jobs are not dead ends and that advancement is possible. I don’t agree. The nastiest people I’ve worked for were junior managers hell bent on climbing the ladder.

I can think of one particular man who I worked under briefly in my 20s who was only one rung above me, but used to delight in reading out loud all my clumsiest sentences for the whole department’s enjoyment.

Now he has a very grand job indeed and is much less beastly. I bumped into him at a party the other day, and he even made a joke at his own expense.

It is true that not everyone gets more civilised as they climb the ladder. Gordon Brown wasn’t noticeably softened by the experience of power. Neither was Joseph Stalin.

But for most people success does seem to mean they become more outwardly agreeable. They are more confident, and their elbows are less sharp. Their jobs are more interesting and everyone sucks up to them. And if these things aren’t enough to exert a softening effect, then there is always the solace of the ginormous pay packet.

This isn’t to say that absolute power makes bad people good. It is merely that there is less need to be horrible for the fun of it.

Corruption works differently at the top: the truly powerful disappear into a haze of vanity and solipsism and other people don’t matter enough to torture, or to heed in any way.

If anyone doubts that, I can quote another piece of research, to be published soon in Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes,proving that the powerful don't listen. The only surprise here is that it took four academics at New York University 2½ years to reach a conclusion that everyone knows already. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)