Looking a bit behind the Ursulas, Analenas, Nulands, Freelands, Boris, Micron etc: It seems as though power attracts ruthless and narcissistic people with a severe lack of empathy and conscience.
In psychology, there is a concept of a “dark triad” of malevolent personality traits: psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. These traits are studied together because they almost always overlap and combine. If a person has psychopathic traits, then they tend to have narcissistic and Machiavellian traits too.
People with these personalities can’t sense other people’s feelings or see the world from any perspective apart from their own. They don’t have a sense of conscience or guilt to stop them behaving immorally. They feel superior and enjoy manipulating and controlling other people. At the same time, they need to feel respected and admired and like to be the centre of attention.
There’s a great deal of evidence that people with dark triad personalities are attracted to the corporate and political worlds. Research, for example, shows that people with narcissistic and psychopathic traits have a strong desire for dominance and are disproportionately common in leadership positions.
As the psychologists Niklas Steffens and Alexander Haslam put it, “like moths to a flame, narcissists may be drawn naturally to positions of power and influence”. Or as the psychologist Robert Hare writes of psychopaths, they “are social predators and like all predators they are looking for feeding grounds. Wherever you get power, prestige and money, you will find them”.
They didn’t become leaders because of their ability or intelligence, but simply because they had a tremendous desire for power and were incredibly ruthless and cruel in their pursuit of it.
Many present day politicians appear to have psychopathic and narcissistic traits too. It’s easy to spot such leaders, because they are always authoritarian, following hardline policies. They try to subvert democracy, to reduce the freedom of the press and clamp down on dissent.
