Power doesn't always erase our morals. Sometimes it teaches us how to make exceptions.
Most people don’t wake up one morning and think, Today I’m in the mood to do some evil shit.
They don’t consciously decide to become selfish, dishonest, or controlling. We’d like to believe those qualities are already ingrained in someone. That bad people do bad things, and good people know better.
But when has human behavior ever been that black and white?
Most of us believe our moral principles are consistent. We tell ourselves dishonesty is wrong, unless telling the truth would do more harm than good. We believe people deserve respect, unless someone has been an asshole. We believe rules should apply equally, until one becomes inconvenient.
Some people who abuse power would even go so far as to describe themselves as fair, reasonable, and fundamentally good. And they might genuinely believe it.
When we think about people who abuse power, our minds usually go straight to corrupt politicians, abusive bosses, or wealthy people who think the rules stopped applying to them because they made some money. We picture people so out of touch with ordinary life, so accustomed to getting their way, that accountability has practically become a foreign concept.
It seems that’s part of the problem with how we understand power. We’re so interested in what people become once they have too much of it that we rarely take a moment to think about how they got there.
But what if we stopped focusing on what happens when someone has too much power; and we started paying attention to what happens when they first find out how much they can get away with?
The first time someone bends a rule and nobody objects. The first time they cross a boundary and face no consequences. The first time they realize their position gives them the luxury of explaining away behavior that would never be tolerated from someone else.
Power doesn’t creep in and let you know that it’s about to change you. It changes what you consider acceptable. What you feel entitled to. What you can justify to yourself without losing sleep over it. And the shift can be so gradual that the person going through it barely notices.
We are the exception to the rule
Most of us believe our moral principles are consistent. We tell ourselves dishonesty is wrong, unless telling the truth would do more harm than good. We believe people deserve respect, unless someone has been an asshole. We believe rules should apply equally, until one becomes inconvenient.
This doesn’t make us corrupt. The moral reasoning behind our decisions are more complicated than we’d like to admit.
Humans are capable of extraordinary rationalization. We’re capable of making a decision, realize it wasn’t exactly our finest moment, and then come up with an explanation that makes it sound reasonable after the fact.
Power gives those explanations something extra: authority. Why? Because when you’re the one in power, you don’t have to convince anyone of why you’re moving how you’re moving. They just have to accept it. There’s a thin line between being right and being in a position where nobody feels secure enough to tell you you’re wrong.
A manager describes intimidation as maintaining standards. A parent describes excessive control as protection. A public official describes secrecy as necessary discretion. The words matter because they change how an action is understood.
Bandura called one of these mechanisms euphemistic labeling. By replacing uncomfortable descriptions with more acceptable language, people are able to make harmful behavior seem ordinary, professional, or even virtuous. But changing the language doesn’t change the consequences.
An employee who is humiliated in front of colleagues doesn’t experience less humiliation because the manager calls it accountability. And yet, when the person in power controls the explanation, the explanation can start to feel more important than the experience itself.
Entitlement doesn’t always look like arrogance
We hear the word entitlement and correlate it with demanding special treatment. That doesn’t come out of nowhere. It develops when a person repeatedly receives exceptions, accommodations, or deference until those privileges begin to feel deserved.
Think of someone who is regularly allowed to arrive late because their position is considered too important to question. At first, they might appreciate the flexibility.After a while, they stop noticing it. Eventually, being asked to follow the same schedule as everyone else feels insulting.
Nothing about the rule changed.
The person just got so used to being the exception that they no longer see it as special treatment. What once felt like a favor eventually feels like something they’re owed. So when they finally get that big fat no, they don’t see it as being treated fairly. They see it has having something taken away from them.
It isn’t always about consciously believing you’re superior. Sometimes it’s about becoming so accustomed to certain advantages that you forget they’re advantages at all.
Research in social psychology suggests that power can make people more focused on their own goals, and in some cases, less attentive to other people’s perspectives.
That doesn’t mean everyone who gains power suddenly loses their ability to empathize. But think about what happens when someone spends years in an environment where other people are constantly adjusting to please them. Their schedule comes first. Their opinions carry more weight. Their decisions rarely get questioned. After a while, they might stop thinking about how their actions affect everyone else. They’ve gotten so used to being in situations where they don’t have to consider anybody else.
You don’t have to believe you’re better than everyone to start behaving as though you are. Sometimes, all it takes is being treated that way long enough.
The strange comfort of not being challenged
Power changes the way people behave around it. They laugh at jokes they don’t find funny. They agree with decisions they privately question. They avoid uncomfortable conversations because disagreeing might cost them more than staying quiet. Meanwhile, the person in charge may interpret all this as respect, admiration, or proof that they’re making the right decisions.
Silence isn’t always agreement. Sometimes it’s self-preservation.
Think about it. If you made a questionable decision and nobody objected, would you reconsider it?
Maybe. But most of us rely, at least partly, on other people’s reactions to figure out whether our behavior is appropriate. When nobody pushes back, it’s easy to assume there’s nothing wrong and we’re good to go and make that move.
Now imagine living like that for years.
Let’s take a look at the courts of European monarchs, where gaining and maintaining the king’s favor determined someone’s social standing and opportunities. At the court of Louis XIV, aristocrats competed for royal attention, and court life revolved around him.
Imagine being a king, surrounded by people whose futures depended on keeping you pleased. How many would risk telling you that your judgment was off? How many would still debate your decisions if the consequence was being killed?
How would you know whether you were actually a good leader?
How would you know?
Power creates a strange kind of isolation. Not from people. A king is surrounded by hundreds of people.
Isolation from contradiction.
When you’re rarely challenged, it becomes easier to confused your own perspective with reality.
The other side of power
We've spent a lot of time talking about what happens to the person who holds power. But what about the person on the receiving end?
Let's go back to that manager who keeps asking his employee to work overtime without pay.
We know how the manager justifies it. He's got deadlines to meet, and employees who should understand that sacrifices are sometimes necessary. But something else is happening here. The employee knows the arrangement isn't exactly fair. Yes, the first time, he agrees because he wants to help. The second time, he might feel a little annoyed but doesn't want to seem difficult. By the fifth or sixth time, he may stop questioning the request altogether.
That's just how things work around here.
Notice that both people have started accepting the same behavior as normal, but for completely different reasons. The manager has become accustomed to expecting something he shouldn't. The employee has become accustomed to giving something he doesn't owe.
From a psychological perspective; we assume that when someone is being treated unfairly, they'll recognize it and eventually stand up for themselves. But that's a very comfortable assumption to make when we're not the ones risking our jobs, relationships, reputations, or financial security.
It's easy to say, Well, why didn't they just say no? But what if saying no comes with consequences?
In psychology, there's a concept called learned helplessness, originally studied by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier. It describes how experiences of uncontrollable negative outcomes can affect a person's expectations about whether their actions will make a difference.
This doesn't mean every employee who tolerates an unreasonable boss is experiencing learned helplessness. Sometimes people make a very conscious decision to stay quiet because they understand the risks. But repeated moments of having little control can change what people expect from a situation.
Imagine speaking up about unfair treatment, only to be pushed aside. You try again, and nothing changes. Eventually, you might stop raising the issue, not because you've decided the treatment is acceptable, but because you've stopped believing that objecting will get you anywhere.
From the outside, that silence might look like cooperation. To the person in charge, it might even look like agreement. But accepting something because you believe it's right and accepting it because you've learned that resisting won't get you anywhere are two very different things.
And then the two sides of power begin to reinforce each other.
The manager sees an employee who never objects, so he assumes his expectations are reasonable. The employee sees a manager who keeps making the same demands, so he begins to believe those demands are simply part of the job.
Neither person stops to question how they arrived at this arrangement. Of course, not everyone responds to authority this way. Some people push back immediately. Others leave. Some tolerate the situation temporarily while looking for a way out.
But the larger point remains. Power doesn't always need enthusiastic agreement to maintain itself. All it needs is for disagreement to feel pointless.
Power reshapes behavior
There’s a popular belief that power doesn’t change people; it just shows us who they really are. It’s a satisfying theory because it suggests that corruption was always there, waiting for an opportunity to come out. But psychologically, the story is less straightforward.
Think about how differently you might behave depending on the consequences you expect.
Someone who once had to negotiate can now give orders. Someone who once had to explain themselves can now refuse questions. Someone who once depended on the goodwill of others may find that others depend on theirs. Those changes can influence behavior even without a dramatic transformation in personality.
Psychologists Dacher Keltner, Deborah Greenfield, and Cameron Anderson proposed that power can activate an approach-oriented pattern of behavior. People experiencing greater power may become more focused on opportunities, rewards, and taking action, while those with less power may pay closer attention to risks and potential consequences.
It’s a theory, not a rule that applies to every powerful person. But it helps explain why authority can alter what people notice and what they feel free to do.
If you’re no longer worried about being challenged, rejected, or held accountable, would you behave differently? Maybe you become more confident. More willing to take risks. Less concerned with what other people think.
Some of those changes could be useful. Others, not so much. The point is that power changes the circumstances in which people make decisions. And when the consequences of certain behaviors change, the behaviors themselves can change, too.
Bringing us to our next point.
Why Doesn't Power Corrupt Everyone?
If power makes it easier to justify questionable behavior, ignore criticism, and become accustomed to special treatment, then why doesn't everyone who gains power turn into an entitled asshole?
It's a fair question.
We've all encountered people in positions of authority who seem genuinely considerate of others. The boss who takes responsibility when something goes wrong instead of finding someone to blame. The teacher who admits they made a mistake. The person who has every opportunity to take advantage of their position but chooses not to.
What makes them different?
We could argue that some people simply have stronger morals. And maybe that's part of it. But I think that explanation gives too much credit to individual character and not enough to the circumstances surrounding it.
Consider two people promoted into identical leadership positions. One enters a workplace where employees can openly question decisions, mistakes are acknowledged, and even senior management is held accountable. The other enters an environment where the boss is always right, disagreement is considered disrespectful, and admitting a mistake is practically unheard of. Both have authority. Both have opportunities to misuse it. But they're operating in two very different environments.
Power doesn't exist in a vacuum. When accountability is part of the culture, being in charge doesn’t mean having the freedom to do whatever you want. It can mean being expected to answer for more of your decisions.
There's also the question of what people believe authority actually means.
Some see power as a reward. They've worked hard, earned their position, and now expect certain privileges to come with it. Others see it as an obligation. Their decisions affect people who depend on them, and that makes them more conscious of the consequences.
Of course, these aren't fixed personality types. The same person can feel entitled in one situation and deeply responsible in another. But the distinction raises a question worth asking. What if the difference isn't how much power someone has, but what they believe that power is for?
Someone who sees authority as permission to prioritize themselves may become increasingly comfortable doing exactly that. Someone who sees it as a responsibility to others may become more careful because they know how much their decisions matter.
Neither outcome is a sure thing.
And that's important, because it would be far too convenient to conclude that power automatically corrupts people. If that were true, we could blame the position and stop examining the choices of the person occupying it.
Power may give people more opportunities to act on their priorities, but their values, circumstances, and willingness to be held accountable still play a factor. A person who welcomes criticism isn't immune to abusing power. But at least they're willing to hear something that might make them reconsider their behavior. And maybe that's one of the more meaningful differences between someone who exercises authority responsibly and someone who becomes consumed by it.
The moment power stops feeling like power
There’s something almost paradoxical about authority. The more familiar it becomes, the less extraordinary it can feel to the person exercising it. The ability to interrupt someone, dismiss a concern, make an exception, withhold an opportunity, or demand an explanation may begin to seem like an ordinary part of daily life.
For the person on the receiving end, those moments carry a lot of weight. Because power isn’t only found in governments, big corps, or institutions. It exists in families, friendships, classrooms, relationships, and workplaces. It shows up whenever one person has more influence over an outcome than another.
Most of us will find ourselves on both sides of that equation as some point. We don’t have to run a country or control a big company to find ourselves in a situation where someone depends on our judgment, our approval, or our willingness to be fair.
And when that happens, the first warning sign won’t be some dramatic shift in our personality. It’ll come as a favor we start expecting. A rule we no longer think applies to us. An apology we decide we don’t owe.
Would we recognize those changes in ourselves? Or would we have perfectly reasonable explanations for every single one?
I think the most dangerous thing about power isn’t how much it changes us. It’s how normal those changes feel.
