Fun Finding: Power and Feelings of Authenticity

The Good Life of the Powerful: The Experience of Power and Authenticity Enhances Subjective Well-Being:

• A common cliché and system-justifying stereotype is that power leads to misery and self-alienation.
• Drawing on the power and authenticity literatures, however, we predicted the opposite relationship.
• Because power increases the correspondence between internal states and behavior, we hypothesized that power enhances subjective well-being (SWB) by leading people to feel more authentic. 

Results:

• Across four surveys representing...different primary social roles (general, work, romantic-relationship, and friendship)...and in an experiment ...we found consistent evidence that experiencing power leads to greater SWB. 
• Moreover, authenticity mediated this effect. 
• Further establishing the causal importance of authenticity, a final experiment..., in which authenticity was manipulated, demonstrated that greater authenticity directly increased SWB.
• Although striving for power lowers well-being, these results demonstrate the pervasive positive psychological effects of having power, and indicate the importance of spreading power to enhance collective well-being.

(Kifer, Heller, Qi, Perunovic, & Galinsky, 2013). Psychological Science.