It's lonely at the top: Power makes you mistrusting

It's lonely at the top

Power is desirable – it helps us achieve goals, frees us from many social constraints, and allows us to be ourselves. But having power isn’t all peaches and cream, it’s also lonely at the top. Perhaps Leonardo DiCaprio summed it up best when he said “I had better success meeting girls before Titanic... there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason.” And it turns out this isn’t just Leo’s problem. According to recent research by Ena Inesi and colleagues, having power – as a manager, as the higher-paid spouse, or even as the babysitter – leads people to see favors by others as more selfishly motivated.

Across five different studies, Inesi and her colleagues found that power lead people to make cynical attributions about the intentions behind another person’s kind acts. When a worker brings coffee for a boss, the boss may think that the co-worker is just trying to get ahead. And it doesn’t end there – because people who are more powerful are more likely to make these cynical attributions, believing those with less power are only using favors as a way to climb to the top, they are also less thankful, less trusting, and less likely to reciprocate the kind act. Gratitude, trust, and reciprocation are the cornerstones of relationship development. Relationships are hard, and without being able to trust the other person and return their favors, relationships are not likely to last long. Indeed, Inesi found that people who earned more than their spouses were less committed to their relationships, and this lack of commitment was explained by their mistrust of their partners’ intentions – the higher paid spouses believed their partners’ favors were more likely to be bestowed in a self-serving manner.
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