Narcissists are attracted to positions of power--or is it the other way around?

I'm always struck by the number of politicians and people who run for political office--people who presume to be qualified to govern others--who can't govern themselves and have the nerve to run for office despite having huge skeletons in their closets (or sometimes in plain view). The recent examples of Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, and Anthony Weiner come to mind. Then, of course, there are those who run for and hold office to meet the demands of their own egos (examples too numerous to mention). News with Views commentator Dave Daubenmire puts it succinctly: "America is governed by sociopaths." The situation is no better in Canada (which is one of the reasons I've largely given up voting), but of course, we can't figure this out ourselves--we need a psychology professor to tell us. As reported by Andrea Hill of Postmedia News, August 16, 2013:

OTTAWA — As Sen. Pamela Wallin‘s damning expense audit becomes public knowledge, many Canadians have taken to social media and the op-ed pages of their local papers to express disgust at what they call the senator’s “sense of entitlement.”

Wallin — who is accused of improperly claiming more than $120,000 in travel expenses — has staunchly denied she feels any such thing.

“I do not have some sense of entitlement,” she told the CBC in June. “I didn’t deliberately set out to abuse this system in any way.”

She insists Senate rules about what can be claimed are unclear and that the audit process was “fundamentally flawed and unfair.”

But behaviour experts say it’s not unusual for people in positions of power to feel entitled.

“People in the Senate, in the Canadian Senate, are there because they’re being rewarded for a lifetime of service to Canada,” said Del Paulhus, a psychology professor at University of British Columbia who studies narcissism. “It seems that’s why they’re there: because they deserve to be there and they deserve to get all the perks.”

Paulhus said Wallin “absolutely” displayed a sense of entitlement by charging taxpayers for travel not directly related to Senate duties and that her behaviour is not surprising. After all, he said, Canada’s upper house — which is filled with successful people who are often told how important they are — breeds a culture of entitlement.

But Paulhus said some people are more likely than others to believe they deserve to use public funds for their own purposes.

Feelings of entitlement often come hand-in-hand with big egos, Paulhus said, and people who make their careers as television broadcasters — as Wallin did — could be more likely to fit that description.

And just as broadcast work draws people with a distorted sense of what they are owed, so too does the Senate, said Christian Jordan, a psychology professor and narcissism expert at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

While he said there’s no reason to think the Senate as a whole has an inflated sense of entitlement, “there’s certainly evidence that narcissists are more likely to seek high-profile positions, be they celebrity positions or in politics, more than other people do.”

“And being in those positions leads people to feel a greater sense of entitlement and power as well,” he said.

Jordan said people with this attitude believe they deserve more than others and don’t feel bad about claiming what they believe to be rightfully theirs.

“It’s a route to get really what they are entitled to or what they deserve to have, and so they don’t really think about the repercussions of what that means for other people or for the public generally,” he said...

...But saying these politicians felt a sense of entitlement when they helped themselves to the public coffers doesn’t tell the whole story, said Frank Farley, a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and past-president of the American Psychological Association.

“It may be an ingredient in the recipe, but the driving force in the recipe is this deeply rooted risk tolerance quality that is demanded in the political life,” Farley said.

He said people who end up in politics are hardwired to take risks. After all, “if you’re a shrinking violet, to use that old phrase, you’re not going to make it to the top.”

Farley said a politician’s job involves speaking in public, engaging in public debate and suffering “the slings and arrows of criticism.” You need to be a risk taker to survive the day-to-day responsibilities of the job, Farley said, but there’s a “destructive side” to that behaviour, which can lead to actions like inappropriately claiming expenses...

As Thomas Sowell says, politicians who talk about being in "public service" are likely to end up thinking that the voters owe them something.

Not getting enough sleep may hurt your performance in school (zzz...)

It's tough to do well in school when you're falling asleep in class because you didn't get enough sleep last night--but of course, we're not smart enough to figure this out without a study to tell us so. As reported by Dr. Veronica Hackethal of Reuters, August 16, 2013:

Children who have trouble sleeping tend to do worse in school than their peers who get a good night's sleep, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Brazil looked at children age seven to 10 who attended Sao Paulo public schools. They found kids with symptoms of sleep disorders or sleep breathing disorders earned lower grades than those without problems sleeping, on average...

...Poor sleep among children has been tied to obesity, which over the long term increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes. And poor school performance has been linked to early dropout rates - so the new findings may have implications beyond getting a good night's sleep, researchers said...

...However, the new study can't say definitively that sleep problems were to blame for poor grades, researchers said.

"This study doesn't prove that a sleep disturbance causes decreased academic performance," Bazil said, "but it shows an association. Basically every category of sleep disturbance the authors looked at correlated with decreased academic performance."

The researchers relied on parents' reports of their children's sleep, rather than bringing kids into a sleep lab overnight, for example...

Go here to see an abstract of the original study.