If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

(Most of this post is taken verbatim from Vicki Haddock’s article "Above the Influence", California Magazine, May/June 2009, p. 41-43, based on research from Berkeley psychology Professor Dacher Keltner, Cameron Anderson (Haas Business School), and graduate student Gavin Kilduff.)

Power flows to self-confident people who speak up – even if they don’t know what they are talking about and are often wrong. Power tends to erode empathy, and to cause the one in power to look upon themselves as the center of the universe. When people go on a power trip, they typically are encouraged by fawners and flatterers. Small wonder that the powerful come and go, yet year after year the rest of America looks at the those in Washington and on Wall Street and asks, “What were they thinking?!?”

Power doesn’t corrupt, however, as much as it reveals the true character. Those who already were community-oriented (“I look out for others”) or exchange-oriented (“I give something in the expectation of something equal in return”) tend to become more generous in power, while those who are innately self-centered become more selfish. Abraham Lincoln observed, “Nearly all men can stand adversity. If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

My advice to those in power: take out the trash twice a week.