Does power make you mean?

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Research suggests that a default brain mechanism may cause us to lose empathy when we gain power. So promotions really do make us mean.

 

In one of the first studies to make this claim, scientists now say a default brain mechanism may cause us to lose empathy when we gain power…

 

Obhi and his team found feelings of increased powerfulness shut down our mirroring system — and potentially our empathy — through a default mechanism in our brains.

 

Liza Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor at the University of Southern California, studies empathy from a neuroscience perspective and says the findings are interesting. “People who activate their mirroring system more, also score higher on empathy.”

 

By Susanne Gargiulo, CNN

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