Free Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both by Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer

that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House.”
    There was a big problem with the statement: The 25th Amendment to the Constitution states that the line of succession goes from the vice president to the Speaker of the House to the president pro tempore of the Senate, before landing on the secretary of state. There was immense backlash to Haig’s seizing of control, and he lasted only another year as secretary of state before resigning. His colleagues, who had long bristled at Haig’s exaggerated sense of power, turned on him: “The public beating Mr. Haig received at the hands of the White House was virtually unprecedented.” He became defined by this one moment and most of his obituaries when he passed away in 2010 led with his infamous phrase, “I am in control here.”
    When the powerful act selfishly and ignore others, they often veer into hypocrisy. As a leader, this is the last place you want to be. Hypocrisy involves holding a double standard—espousing and demanding strict moral standards for others while violating those same standards in one’s own behavior. Indeed, our research with Joris Lammers shows that power increases hypocrisy—power licenses people to break laws and act freely on their desires while creating strict laws for others.
    Consider two U.S. governors who made news for their dramatic and tragic downfalls: Eliot Spitzer and Rod Blagojevich. As attorney general, Spitzer targeted any organization with links to prostitution, even travel agencies that he said promoted sex tourism. He also targeted the male customers of prostitutes and signed into law the “anti–human trafficking” bill that increased the penalty for patronizing prostitutes. But on March 10, 2008, Spitzer was famously discovered to be a frequent customer of prostitutes. Two days later, Spitzer resigned as governor of New York.
    Similarly, Governor Blagojevich had positioned himself as a reformer and campaigned against what he called a “legacy of corruption, mismanagement and lost opportunities.” It was later discovered that Blagojevich had tried to
sell
the rights to a vacant United States Senate seat to the highest bidder (this was the seat that Barack Obama vacated when he was elected president in 2008 and resigned from the Senate). In recorded comments, Blagojevich said, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s fucking golden. I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing.”
    Hypocrisy is Spitzer passing laws that targeted prostitution clients, while patronizing prostitutes himself. It is Blagojevich campaigning as a reformer, condemning corruption in others, while flagrantly violating these standards himself. And it ended badly for both of them.
    Hypocrites are intolerable; they boil our blood and leave us salivating at the prospect of revenge. And, often, we get it. This is why hypocrites don’t remain in power for very long. It’s the combined curses of selfishness and hypocrisy that bring the king down.
    Hubris and overconfidence can explain why many powerful people act with selfishness and harshness. But it turns out that powerful people also act badly when they feel threatened and disrespected. In fact, power and low status are a particularly toxic combination. Nearly all of us have suffered at the hands of an official who holds power over us in one domain, but would command little respect in the outside world. These individuals are prone to using their power to make life difficult for others. We call these people Little Tyrants.
    A particularly notorious example of this toxic combination involved the American prison guards in the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib. In 2004, these guards were caught on film celebrating their power over inmates. On a smaller scale, consider the sometimes egregious bullying of security guards, DMV officials, reimbursement administrators, or bouncers at