Have you ever felt that your boss just didn’t understand you? Is trying to explain your position like talking to a brick wall? There may be a reason for this lack of empathy.

Researchers say that the possession of power prevents individuals from understanding the perspective of others.

In a study, participants were randomly assigned to either high power groups or low power groups. The participants were asked to draw an E on their own foreheads.

If the subject wrote the E in a self-oriented direction, backwards to others, this indicated a lack of perspective talking. On the other hand, when the E was written legible to others, this indicated that the person had thought about how others might perceive the letter.

Those assigned to a high power group were three times more likely to draw a self-oriented E than those assigned to a low power group. Being oriented to their own perspective left the powerful unable to adjust to another’s perspective and impaired their ability to correctly interpret emotion.

Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University, Joe Magee of the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU, and colleagues at Stanford University conducted the study and their article, Power and Perspectives Not Taken appears in the December eition of Psychological Science.

Association for Psychological Science