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A study of personality types once found that as a group, serial
killers scored highest in "superficial charm, an exaggerated sense
of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of
others." The other highest-scoring group for these undesirable
traits?
Politicians.
Again and again science has found that being in charge not only
attracts terrifying douchebags, but creates them as well. And with
that, here's the scariest article you'll read this month:
#5.
Power and
Self-Absorption Go Hand in Hand
Try something for us. Write the word "ASS" on your forehead with
a marker. If you refuse to do that, just picture yourself writing
it, but really imagine you have the letters up there.
Hold that thought.
Science says there is a very logical reason that those in power
don't actually give a damn about you: They are too busy thinking
about themselves. There are several reasons for this, according to
research.
First, researchers
found that in leaderless situations, those with high opinions
of themselves will take charge, for better or for worse. Well, that
makes sense -- they think they're awesome, so of course they think
they should be in charge. The problem, though, is that this same,
often unwarranted, confidence also persuades the followers to
follow them. And so they climb through the ranks by basically being
the biggest loudmouth braggarts in the room.
"Kanye West" is a position of power,
right?
The other problem is that the narcissistic types can manage to
lead effectively -- for the short
term. They're great at convincing everyone they have all the
answers, but at the end of the day they can't take their eyes off
their own self-interest long enough to focus on long-term goals
such as "not losing all of our money." Actually being in power only
makes it worse, which brings us back to the ASS on your
forehead.
When you drew the imaginary letters, where did the letter "A"
wind up? On your left, so that the word reads normally if you look
in a mirror? That's how a lot of people would do it -- after all,
that's the way you write things. Left to right.
Unless you're Asianese.
But that would be making the word backward for anyone else
trying to read it. If you took the time to stop and consider that,
and then carefully wrote the letters and word backward so it would
be readable to a person facing you, that says a lot about your
outlook toward other people.
They actually did that experiment in a
study at Northwestern University. They randomly assigned a
group of people to hold a position of power during the study, and
assigned another group to a position where they'd have no power at
all. Later, they gave everyone a simple task: Draw a capital letter
"E" on their own foreheads. Same as we had you do with the word
ASS.
The results were startling. People in the powerful group were
almost three times as likely to carelessly draw the letter so
that it was unreadable to anyone else. Those in the powerless
group were the ones who stopped, thought about it and turned the
letter around so that others could read it.
Not pictured: consideration for other
people.
That's right: Even meaningless, arbitrary power, assigned purely
for the experiment, was enough to make the subjects less likely to
stop for a few seconds and consider the perspectives of others. Now
imagine what an actual position of power would do.
Oh, we're just getting started here.
#4.
Feeling Powerful
Makes It Easier to Lie
It's estimated that the
average person lies up to six times a day -- it's even
considered an
important developmental milestone in babies, which presumably
means that nobody will accept you as a person until you figure out
how to make shit up to keep yourself out of trouble. So you can
imagine how much politicians and CEOs have to bullshit us on a
minute-to-minute basis to get their reputations. Well, there's a
scientific reason they are the way they are.
Warning: Exposure to truth may cause
anaphylaxis.
You'd think this would be obvious -- that liars tend to get into
positions of power because they're so good at lying (and science says
you're right), but there's a much weirder factor at play.
Researchers at Columbia
Business School used a similar setup to the "E" experiment
above, where they did a role-play that divided subjects into
leaders and subordinates. Leaders were even given a fancy, large
office; the underlings got a small, windowless room. All of them
were then tempted to lie (they found a $100 bill and were put in a
situation where they'd have to lie about it to the people running
the experiment if they wanted to keep it).
We'd probably just have grabbed the $100 and bolted
for the parking lot.
After a nice round of vigorous lying, both groups of subjects
were tested for stress hormone levels. Researchers also studied a
video-tape of the subjects lying their asses off. The result, in
their words:
"Low-power individuals showed the expected emotional, cognitive,
physiological, and behavioral signs of deception; in contrast,
powerful people demonstrated no evidence of lying across emotion,
cognition, physiology, or behavior."
Once more, that's after a couple of hours of completely fake
power. These people were chosen at random, but when they were
stuffed into a fancy room that made them feel like big-shots, their
feelings of guilt about lying melted away.
And that made them better liars; it's those unpleasant feelings
of guilt and stress that cause the physical cues that let people
know we're lying. Add a feeling of power to the mix and the
opposite happens. In fact, instead of negative emotions, the study
found that a powerful person actually experiences a positive
internal response. These people feel joyful relaxation as a
result of lying their fucking faces off.
It's almost as if the feeling of being in power made them think
the normal rules of morality didn't apply to them. Which leads us
to ...
Ted Haggard. And also this next point.
#3.
Experiments Show
Power and Hypocrisy Are Linked in the Brain
This one goes a long way toward explaining the almost endemic
hypocrisy of politicians and business leaders we see in the news
every day. It explains why so many
vehemently
anti-gay
politicians and
religious leaders are creepy sexual deviants. It explains why
banks are
currently refusing to lend to anyone while giving their
employees
huge
bonuses with
bailout money. And it explains why the Senate voted itself a
pay raise on the same day it
refused to increase the minimum wage.
"Why? Because fuck them, that's why."
Once again, this is something that can be tested in experiments,
and once more the correlation goes the opposite way you'd
expect.
A Dutch researcher mixed things up this time, using five
different experiments to try to instill a sense of power in people
using different methods, presumably to make sure it wasn't anything
particular to a specific kind of role-playing that got the
results.
They tried 3.5, GURPS and Shadowrun.
In one experiment, he took random subjects and had them
role-play in a fictional government, so that some would have
positions of power (aka prime minister) while others would be
peons, like in the previous experiment. But other groups would, for
instance, be asked to vividly describe a time when they held a
position of power, in an effort to get them into the same mood they
experienced when they were in that role. No one involved knew what
the experiment was trying to uncover.
Later the subjects were given a questionnaire with gray-area
moral questions (such as, is it OK to exceed the speed limit if
you're late for an appointment). After just that brief period of
feeling powerful, the role-playing prime ministers were more ready
than the peons to say they would bend the rules if they needed to.
But when asked other hypothetical questions that tested
whether they thought it was OK for other people to skirt
the rules, the prime ministers were harder on the rule-benders than
the peons.
Nobody gives peons a break.
No matter how the researcher went about instilling the feelings
of power, the results were the same: Within minutes, a
feeling of power flips a switch in the brain that says, "The rules
now do not apply to me. BRING ME A WHORE."
A WHORE, I SAY!
But even stranger, the people induced to feel powerless went the
opposite way -- they actually were more self-critical than they'd
normally be. Think about what that says about society: The people
who are already powerless, as a result feel like they're less
worthy to be in power and thus stay powerless.
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the question is not 'why waste science to prove what everybody knows' but 'if everybody knows this, why are things still the way they are'
Now show a study on the psychological makeup of a comedian.
"Experiments Show Power and Hypocrisy Are Linked in the Brain"
Is that like how Al Gore flies a private jet around the world and lives in a giant house? Of course you couldn't make that joke because it would get in the way of your stupid, dated George Bush jokes. Hey, Kathy, those jokes were stupid and dated when Gladstone was making them three f**king years ago.
Ah yes, mocking someone who hasn't been in public office for ten years is SO much more topical than mocking someone who hasn't been in office for two. Well done, you comedic GENIUS.
These experiments just don't represent reality. They're carefully controlled situations. They're sterile and meaningless.
NOW STOP READING CRACKED AND GET BACK TO WORK.
amazing how this article is all about how wealthy and powerful people suck, then there's a ad down the bottom "Date Wealthy Men".
right...
I think pictures of the Obama administration would have been more appropriate for this article since they exhibit these traits in far greater quantity than the Bush administration ever did.
whatever
Obama is numero uno.
No really, he is. Just finish reading the article before b***hing.
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"Some people ask 'Why? Why treat the customer this way?'"
"Why? Because f**k em, that's why."
Excellent Chappelle's show reference there.
Ummm...
What if EVERYONE felt powerful?
Imagine the xhit storm THAT would create.
According to the article:
You become more self-critical the less power you have.
Thus it's opposite:
"It's almost as if the feeling of being in power made them think the normal rules of morality didn't apply to them."
Manifest Destiny
Remember that one? Empowered the peoples of these
United States to close their moral eye and become a tidal wave of bulldozers to anyone that stood in the way of their
**Manifest Destiny**
Did you know that the words Manifest Destiny were divinely empowered?
And WE have proof!
There are many conduits to G-d. Back in the days of Manifest Destiny they thumped the Bible but they were also into numbers - numerology.
The powerless could feel more powerful with just a pencil and paper and too much time on their hands. They could be the first one on to the shore of one of G-d's secrets, just apply numbers to it.
3 - The Trinity is a kickazz number.
33 - A Trinity of Trinitys ! Forget about it ! Whoa !
The numerologists will tell you:
The letter A is equivalent to the number 1,
B is 2 etc up until you reach 9 then you start over again. Thus the letter I is 9 while J is 1.
(Go figure)
By this system, if you add up all the letters in MANIFEST
(41596512) they total 33 ! Holy Hannah !
And the letters in DESTINY?
You guessed it, 33 !
MANIFEST DESTINY is
33 33
A double Trinity of Trinitys !
Huzzah! That'll put gasoline in your bulldozer!
So what does that do for us "painters of foreheads"?
Let us feel even more powerful and apply numerology to
ASS (or SSA if you truely are one already).
A = 1
S the nineteenth letter = 1
ASS = 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 !
Jeepers H Smoke !
No wonder the pimped out ass has such sway over our culture!
Let's delve a little deeper into this word and see what we find.
The letter A is the first letter in the alphabet and S is the nineteenth.
1 19 19
Explore. What happened in history on 1/19/19 ?
Thanks to Google we find: January 19, 1919
another Manifest Destiny of sorts:
"Tidal wave" of molasses 50 feet high and 80 feet wide kills dozens, Boston
Can you imagine some hapless duck that happened to be standing just around the corner not seeing what was coming.
"What you say? What? Mo' asses is comin?"
"Molasses! Molasses!"
"What?"
Dude, lay off the weed...seriously
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Hm, so our entire political system is fundamentally flawed? In one Douglas Adams book the person in charge of the entire universe a man in a small hut who didn't even believe in the universe, now I see why, this is the only way a leader could bypass this.
Power makes you feel powerful? It's not a bad article, but I can't believe people actually need experiments to prove this.
no retard. power makes you feel powerful and feeling powerful with power makes you compromise decisions with security.
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This group also has more MONEY in the BANK, which allows them longer furloughs.
good news
I love a good psychology article. If it's talking about stuff I haven't considered, then it's bound to be one of the most interesting things I read that day.
This is honestly one of the best articles I've read, on Cracked. But then again, I'm a sociology buff.
I've been reading cracked for a pretty long time now i think. I truely enjoy how funny some articles and competitions are.
But over the years after reading a abundance of articles that transcend the comedy and becomes a legit article, written in a form and language thats easy for me to digest, i barely need the humour anymore. Its just a bonus when i find something really funny.
Cracked has given me many interesting subjects that i have explored on my own. I learned that reading cracked is informative but not always true, humorous but not always funny.
Beggars cant be choosers right? I cant entertain myself as good as cracked can most of the time. So inspite of everything thats wrong with cracked, i f**king love you
::starts slow clap::
But for real, I agree with you. I'm a diehard Crackedhead!
Ditto.
The statement about dice throwing is not accurate.
There ARE professional dice throwers, THIS IS WHY THE CASINOS MAKE YOU THROW THE DICE SO THAT AT LEAST ONE OF THEM BOUNCES OFF THE WALL. SO THAT THE THROW IS CONSIDERED RANDOM.
There literally are hustlers out there that do games out of the back of their trucks and swindle money out of chumps like no other.
That seems highly unlikely.
The reason casinos make you do that is because rolling a dice with minimal power can indeed help you control the outcome, it avoids confusion with people trying to cheat. It does not neccesarily imply that throwing a dice normally would make it any less random, only throwing it at greatly reduced speed.
And i would bet 100$ that those hustlers are directly cheating with the dices and quick hand movements, like all other hustlers. They wouldnt gamble on their skill to control something that, even when good at it, is unlikely to give a certain result.
I wrote it on my forehead backwards and made sure the letters would be have been readable, if anyone were to try. I feel considerate now. :D
I've been trying to visualize writing on my face any other way than backwards and it's just not clicking. however, I did used to wear my rings upside down so they were pointing towards me- I must have become more considerate since I was 8!
The thing about rings bothers me greatly... they're supposedly the 'right' way while facing you (according to sites displaying their designs), but I do agree the more logical way would be them to face the other way, not only for any outside viewer, but for the fact, that while standing with your hands down on your sides the rings would be the right way, not upside down.