This is such a one-dimensional piece of hoo-ha. I'm going to mostly skip the obvious reasons why a person with years of legal reasoning already 'on the books' might become less nuanced as they get older.
Looking in the wrong place
"Another study conducted by Mr. Keltner and Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business, measured "Machiavellian" tendencies, such as the willingness to spread malicious gossip, in a group of sorority sisters. It turned out that the Machiavellian sorority members were quickly identified by the group and isolated. Nobody liked them, and so they never became powerful."
This ignores, of course, what just about anyone has realized from the time people realized they were realizing things: the best devious people are able to be devious while being thought to be good. The gossip is quickly excluded because nobody likes a gossip. But beware the gossip that nobody even realizes is a gossip, who spreads their news by craft and artifice (perhaps without realizing it). They often spread gossip by rallying people to 'help' where their help isn't wanted and doesn't belong. Yet, because they're ostensibly being 'nice', it can be hard to object.
More practically in our domain: There are people who are good at noticing why things can fail. This isn't a particularly novel skill. Yet in some organizations, they're applauded from saving the group from disasters that were certainly around the corner! This is a devastatingly bad way to approach problems, and prevents progress. Yet it's easy to applaud because A) people like to be afraid; B) You only have to be right once to get to say 'I told you so' forever.
Much better is the person that can deliver. But of course, this is more risky: building new things risks mistakes, yet also can have opportunity. But note how quickly does the work of releasing several new products get ignored when one of them is a problem child.
Mini-tangent aside: You don't want to look at people who everyone thinks is devious and see if they succeed. You want to find people who are devious but hide it, and see if they succeed. My bet: they do. They just can't hide it forever.
Selection Bias
This article also fails to account for the selection bias at play. Are executives more likely to cheat, lie, or injure others? Or is word about their lying, cheating, and injurious behavior simply both more likely to be talked about and also more wide-reaching in impact? Sally in accounting cheating on her husband isn't likely to attract as much notice as Susan the CEO. And if Bob's stealing $100 in supplies a month, how does that compare to Barry stealing $100,000 as the COO?
The fact is that such corruptions are more interesting because they make for a better story, for some definition of 'better' including "fall from power" and "the powerful are like us".
(There may also be a factor at play where a person with power never gets told 'no'. I can think of celebrities where people 'latch on' for the ride, and won't ever say anything corrective or actually helpful to the person, because to do so risks the free lunch. The crash and burn can be painful.)
I'm slightly confused, but I saw your id being bored guy and sort of realised another thing people realise from the time they start realising, that talking from the top of your head is easier than getting the hard data and actually having something to say.
Sure the article has short falling, but you can not just dismiss it like that. It contained a lot of psychological studies, it was not just an opinion piece like your comment, and actually was cool headed.
I do not think the article was about devious people in any way. It was about power and the fact that power corrupts. That you might say is something we know, but the article offers details in how it corrupts. You might say those details we know also, but hey, that's mainstream scientific journalism.
Contrary to what seems to be increasingly popular belief, you don't need to cite studies to criticize an article like this. One can point out things like flaws in reasoning and logical fallacies, without having to cite any studies or research.
Unfortunately, this article is not empirical research. It points to empirical research to back up its claims, but I suspect the conclusions in the actual research articles aren't as clear as this summary.
Yes, it was "about" power corrupting, but it absolutely did not demonstrate it, and it certainly didn't detail how pure individuals came to be corrupted by the acquisition of power.
It can't possibly show that power corrupts. All the author does does is talk about how there are powerful, corrupt people. For instance, he writes, "This isn't just anecdotal: Surveys of organizations find that the vast majority of rude and inappropriate behaviors, such as the shouting of profanities, come from the offices of those with the most authority." Except it is anecdotal: that's what a survey is designed to show--a systematic study of anecdotes. And we already know anecdotes aren't systematic surveys. If you wanted to show that the 'vast majority of rude and inappropriate behavior' came from 'the top', you'd have to design a rubric for what constitutes rude and inappropriate behavior, record all social interactions, transcribe them and attribute them to an encoded number, send off the transcriptions to people without the ability to deduce the actors, tally rude and inappropriate behavior, and then convert back to the original actors and see where the inappropriate behavior came from.
There's literally zero evidence that supports the argument of this article, that being: "The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power."
The "Machiavellian" study, for instance, says nothing about whether or not Machiavelli was right. It only says people who are perceived as being 'malicious gossips' are shunned. GROUNDBREAKING!? No. Nowhere does Machiavelli say, "The way to power is to be known as a malicious gossip."
Looking in the wrong place
"Another study conducted by Mr. Keltner and Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business, measured "Machiavellian" tendencies, such as the willingness to spread malicious gossip, in a group of sorority sisters. It turned out that the Machiavellian sorority members were quickly identified by the group and isolated. Nobody liked them, and so they never became powerful."
This ignores, of course, what just about anyone has realized from the time people realized they were realizing things: the best devious people are able to be devious while being thought to be good. The gossip is quickly excluded because nobody likes a gossip. But beware the gossip that nobody even realizes is a gossip, who spreads their news by craft and artifice (perhaps without realizing it). They often spread gossip by rallying people to 'help' where their help isn't wanted and doesn't belong. Yet, because they're ostensibly being 'nice', it can be hard to object.
More practically in our domain: There are people who are good at noticing why things can fail. This isn't a particularly novel skill. Yet in some organizations, they're applauded from saving the group from disasters that were certainly around the corner! This is a devastatingly bad way to approach problems, and prevents progress. Yet it's easy to applaud because A) people like to be afraid; B) You only have to be right once to get to say 'I told you so' forever.
Much better is the person that can deliver. But of course, this is more risky: building new things risks mistakes, yet also can have opportunity. But note how quickly does the work of releasing several new products get ignored when one of them is a problem child.
Mini-tangent aside: You don't want to look at people who everyone thinks is devious and see if they succeed. You want to find people who are devious but hide it, and see if they succeed. My bet: they do. They just can't hide it forever.
Selection Bias
This article also fails to account for the selection bias at play. Are executives more likely to cheat, lie, or injure others? Or is word about their lying, cheating, and injurious behavior simply both more likely to be talked about and also more wide-reaching in impact? Sally in accounting cheating on her husband isn't likely to attract as much notice as Susan the CEO. And if Bob's stealing $100 in supplies a month, how does that compare to Barry stealing $100,000 as the COO?
The fact is that such corruptions are more interesting because they make for a better story, for some definition of 'better' including "fall from power" and "the powerful are like us".
(There may also be a factor at play where a person with power never gets told 'no'. I can think of celebrities where people 'latch on' for the ride, and won't ever say anything corrective or actually helpful to the person, because to do so risks the free lunch. The crash and burn can be painful.)