Immunity from social pressure and norms, accompanied by the confidence you can influence things outside your control, is a potent mix. Along with disinhibition and a sense of illusory control, a third influence enters the mix: diminished interest in and feelings for others, especially those with lower rank.

Our ability to deal with emotions is inconsistent. Sometimes coping is easy. When it’s not, if we can’t do it ourselves, we turn to something or someone else to help us feel better.

In an earlier experiment by Keltner and another colleague, three undergraduates were told they were participating in a study of attitudes on social issues.7 They were really participating in a study of power. Keltner and his team broke participants into groups of three and asked each group to discuss a controversial social issue and then write

awareness, and unleashing the creative potential and generative capacity that power gives us.

leaders notoriously underestimate risks and overestimate the potential for success. We tend to see these gross exaggerations as politically motivated. They may be, but they are also the psychological effects of power.

As with all taboos, we have developed an irrational relationship with power. We hate it yet crave it. We criticize those in power while striving to get more for ourselves. We eye anyone in authority with suspicion, but fail to reflect on our own uses of power. We overestimate others’ influence and underestimate our own. We do away with hierarchy

And yet this magic is strengthened and amplified by another, closely allied, and equally potent psychological effect of power: illusory control.

But my self-awareness was insufficient to close the gap between what I thought I was doing and what I actually did—and how it impacted them.

me understand this inner experience of power, of being in the crosshairs of public opinion, under pressure for your performance, and subject to the projections of others. I gained greater empathy for the role of power holder, and saw and felt how much the role itself affects the person within it.