All power tends to corrupt But power without status corrupts
absolutely DURING the second world war a new term of abuse
entered the English language. To call someone “a little Hitler”
meant he was a menial functionary who employed what power he had
in order to annoy and frustrate others for his own
gratification. From nightclub bouncers to the squaddies at Abu
Ghraib prison who tormented their prisoners for fun, little
Hitlers plague the world. The phenomenon has not, though,
hitherto been subject to scientific investigation. Nathanael
Fast of the University of Southern California has changed that.
He observed that lots of psychological experiments have been
done on the effects of status and lots on the effects of power.
But few, if any, have been done on both combined. He and his
colleagues Nir Halevy of Stanford University and Adam Galinsky
of Northwestern University, in Chicago, set out to correct this.
In particular they wanted to see if it is circumstances that
create little Hitlers or, rather, whether p