People In Power Make Better Liars

New York Gov. David Paterson is embroiled in a scandal over whether he used his power and influence to intimidate a woman pursuing a domestic violence case against one of his top aides.

As a result, the governor said last month that he would not seek a second term, and his communications director quit earlier this month citing “integrity” issues.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who went to prison after the spectacular collapse of the company, is appealing to the Supreme Court his 2006 conviction on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying.

His lawyers argue that he didn’t get a fair trial and that Skilling’s conduct, “even if wrongful in some way,” was not illegal because he was not looking out for his personal interests “apart from his normal compensation incentives.”

The issue of integrity is at the heart of the predicaments these powerful men find themselves in. An organization’s health often hinges on the trustworthiness of its leaders, ethics experts say.

There’s old saying: power corrupts. And a new Columbia Business School study titled, “People with Power are Better Liars,” finds there may be some truth behind the cliché.

“People in power are able to lie better,” said Dana Carney, a management professor at Columbia Business School and one of the co-authors of the study. “It just doesn’t hurt them as much to do it.”

The effects of lying
For the average liar, she said, the act of lying elicits negative emotions, physiological stress and the fear of getting caught in a lie. As a result, she added, liars will often send out cues that they are lying by doing things like fidgeting in a chair or changing the rate of their speech.

But for the powerful, the impact is very different, according to the study:

“Power, it seems, enhances the same emotional, cognitive, and physiological systems that lie-telling depletes. People with power enjoy positive emotions, increases in cognitive function, and physiological resilience such as lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Thus, holding power over others might make it easier for people to tell lies.”

Carney and the other researchers, Andy Yap, Brian Lucas and Pranjal Mehta, used volunteers who were told they were either leaders or subordinates. The leaders were given a large office, and the subordinates given a small windowless space.

The subjects were asked to find $100 that was hidden nearby.

* Half of the volunteers were instructed by a computer to steal the $100. The other half were instructed to put the money back (participants were assured — and believed — that the experimenter did not know whether they were assigned to steal or not steal).
* All individuals were instructed to convince the experimenter that they did not take the money. If the individual could successfully convince the experimenter (regardless of whether they were lying), they could keep the $100 in cash.
* All participants were then interviewed about whether they had stolen the money: half were lying and half were telling the truth. The interviewer (blind to experimental condition) asked all participants the same critical questions, for example: “Did you steal the $100?” and “Why should I believe you?”