In 1997, one sudden one (although not too virulent) meningitis epidemic in the Community of Madrid caused considerable alarm between the parents with children in school age. The sanitary authorities were not in that moment partial to the massive vaccination of the whole school population, although later they changed opinion (these decisions are difficult to take and the information at the moment of never taking them is finished). The case is that, in the middle of this fuss, the citizens of on foot we find out that the President of that time of the Congress of the Deputies (Federico Trillo) had used the official car and the official doctor of the Congress to vaccinate his children.
I suppose that he should not scandalize me for something like that. Obviously, the anecdote reflects the moral tasting of the personage, but worse things we have seen in the same personage and in others (of the same one and of other parties). The tireless double mulberry tree of many politicians is a topic appellant in the heads of the newspapers. Beyond the rejection, the curiosity assaults me for the underlying psychological mechanism: Is it a question of simple hard face or really they believe that his acts are ruled by a rasero different from that of the rest of the population? It makes me happy to see that this question has attracted the attention of the professional scientists … and the answer (judging by a limited number of studies) is that, really, the power corrupts, but only to those that are thinking about deserving it.
The study (here), published by Joris Lammers (University of Tillburg) and collaborators, explores this question for the method of inducing (priming) a sensation of being able in the subjects of the study, for example asking them to remember a situation like that, later to evaluate his moral behavior in certain situations. For example, in a study the "priming" was realized in two random groups, one high power and other of down. Later each of the groups split into other two. Him one spent to one of them a questionnaire in which they were evaluating until they were considering point to be immoral to "inflate" the expenses in a work trip; another group took part in a game of dice, in which the punctuation that they were extracting could turn into a small award in cash (the dice tiraben in a private cubicle and the subject he was communicating the result to the experimenter).
In case of the questionnaire, the group of the powerful ones valued worse that that of the helpless ones doing pitfalls in the accounts, but - and this is the interesting thing - the same persons did more pitfall than another group on having brought (in his favor) the result of the dice. In other words, the mere allusion to a situation to be able was doing the persons most inclined to do pitfalls and to censure the foreign pitfalls.
Another similar study, nevertheless, suggests that this tendency to behave of hypocritical form does not happen in all the cases, but in those individuals that they think that they have acquired "according to the law" such power. Curiously, the individuals who were thinking that “it was not deserved”, were tending to be more demanding with it itself as with other persons. Instead of of acting hypocritically they were doing it hipércritamente (the swearword belongs to the authors).
I know that such a thing is impossible, but: would there be any way of achieving that there were gaining access to power positions persons who really do not want to exercise it and agree for felt cigar of the duty?
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