POWER, the most insidious of vices —
Which leads to the question: How do we help our elected officials resist the temptations — peer pressure doesn’t seem to work … .
But science, Shankar found, tells us that what determines whether someone is more prone to a sex scandal isn’t gender, but power.
He spoke to Joris Lammers, an assistant professor at Tilburg University. He recently conducted a survey that asked more than 1,000 professionals to describe whether they worked in positions of power.
Then he asked whether they had ever committed adultery or ever foresaw that they would engage in an adulterous relationship.
“Yeah, we found the effects, in both men and women — the more they have power, the more likely they are to engage in infidelity,” Lammers said.
Lammers found that the most powerful people in the survey were 30 percent more likely to have affairs.
Lammers told Shankar about preliminary research that looks at why power might increase the chance of infidelity. Lammers scanned people’s brains and gave them a fleeting sense of power and found the way they view risks and rewards changes.