Why Powerful People Overestimate Themselves
President Barack Obama isn't as great as he thinks he is. To be fair, neither were Presidents Bush or Clinton — or Washington or Lincoln, for that matter. The same can be said for every general who ever commanded an army or every boss who ever ran an office. The fact is, if there's one thing that defines people in powerful positions, it's that they overestimate what they can do with that power.
That, at least, is the conclusion of a study published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. And while you may have always suspected that the folks who run the world aren't all they're cracked up to be, don't take too much satisfaction from the fact. It's the rest of us who wind up paying for their overreaching. (See pictures of how Presidents age in office.)
Having a lot of faith in yourself can be a very good thing. Decades of psychological studies have found that people who believe they have some control of their lives and circumstances are more optimistic and proactive and have higher levels of self-esteem than others. People who believe events control them are likelier to be depressed and pessimistic and to avoid challenging situations. But what happens when your sense of control spins out of control? Try to cross the ocean with nothing but a rowboat and muscle, and you're not going to get very far. (See TIME's list of the 100 most influential people of 2008.)
To explore how we come by our illusory sense of power, a team led by business professors Nathanael Fast and Deborah Gruenfeld of Stanford University devised a series of experiments. In the first, they recruited 38 students and divided them into three groups. They asked one group to write about an experience in which they felt they had control over other people, and another group to write about a time they felt out of control. The third group wrote nothing. All of the students were then given dice and told that if they correctly guessed the number they rolled, they would win $5. They were also given the choice of rolling the dice themselves or having someone else roll for them.
The results were striking. One hundred percent of the students who had written about being in charge rolled the dice themselves, compared with only 58% of the students who had written about someone else having power over them. Sixty-nine percent of the control group chose to roll. There may be nothing quite as random as a roll of the dice, but the students on a power high appeared to believe they could do it better. (Read "Does Power Corrupt? Absolutely Not.")
"Choosing to roll the die represents an illusory sense of control," the researchers write. "[But] the outcomes were uncontrollable."
In a second test, 30 volunteers were paired off for a role-playing game in which one partner was assigned the part of the superior and the other the part of the subordinate. All of the volunteers were then asked to read a scenario about a fictional marketing agency and rate how likely they would be to improve the agency's profitability next year. The people who had been designated superiors in the role-playing game consistently believed they would do better at the helm of the agency than the people who had been designated subordinates. In the third study, 79 volunteers again wrote about a time they had either been in control or under another's control, and then completed a questionnaire designed to measure their self-esteem, initiative and perceived ability to influence their world. Across the board, the people who had written about being in charge scored higher. That's good — but not if it goes too far.
"By producing an illusion of personal control," the authors write, "power may cause people to lose touch with reality in ways that lead to overconfident decision-making." (Read "Gut Decisions May Not Be Smart.")
With stock markets collapsing around the world, nobody needs an illustration of where that kind of hubris can lead. Ordinary folks with bills to pay may smell something funny in fiscal instruments with names like "credit-default swaps," but when you work on Wall Street and people call you a "master of the universe," you think you can make the things pay off. Even nonpartisans would agree that George W. Bush waded into the Iraq mess with more certainty than strategy. And Bill and Hillary Clinton might actually have achieved health-care reform if they had tried negotiating with the opposition instead of steamrolling it. (See George W. Bush's biggest economic mistakes.)
"One way people in power can guard against this is to place themselves into a deliberative mind-set, focusing on the pros and cons," says Fast. "This takes a great deal of discipline, however, as the tendency after taking power is to move straight to action."
None of this is to say that all cockiness leads to ruin — sometimes it's what's needed for a leader seeking greatness. During his brief presidency, John F. Kennedy had the preposterous idea that the CIA could topple the government of Cuba and the equally foolish notion that the U.S. could put a man on the moon before 1970. One plan led to the Bay of Pigs, the other to the Sea of Tranquility.
"It is likely," says Fast, "that some of history's most tragic failures and inspiring successes were orchestrated by power holders who overestimated their abilities to control future outcomes." Here's hoping that the leaders we've got now are guessing right.
手機時代 民調準確嗎
年底的縣市長選舉已經開始加溫，各黨在決定要提名的候選人時都有一道民意調查的步驟，而且占有很大比例的分數。所以政治人物對民意調查一定是又愛又恨，但又不得不重視。不過在這資訊氾濫和人人都用行動電話的時代，要注意民意調查已經不像過去那麼容易，其結果也不像過去那麼精確了。
過去民調通常從有線的家用電話中抽樣，而家中接電話的通常是家長或父母親等成年人，所以結果具有代表性和準確性。現在根據估計全球行動電話連線數已經超過四十億（因很多人可能有多個行動電話的號碼），而且很多家庭已經不再使用有線電話，愈年輕或所得愈高的家庭愈是如此。如果現在民意調查只從有線的市內電話中抽樣，會造成抽樣的母體有偏差，導致民意調查的結果可能就不太準確了。
然而，將行動電話號碼納入抽樣範圍無法完全解決此問題，因為：
一、依賴行動電話的人和不使用行動電話的人是兩種不同的族群，其民調結果可能南轅北轍，很難有一致性，也無法推論到所有的民眾。
二、很多人擁有一個以上的行動電話號碼，其被抽中的機率就會較高，通常這類人所得較高，其回答就無法代表全體。
三、很多青少年擁有行動電話，除非是牽涉到青少年的問題，其可能拒絕回答或其回答和成人世界的回答絕對無法掛勾。
四、在一些國家，行動電話的收話方也需付費，他們可能不願意接受冗長的電話民調，費錢又費時。
五、顧名思義，行動電話很多時候是行動時接聽，民調的時機可能不對。而且行動電話的按鍵回答也不方便，不像家用電話聽筒和號碼盤分開，這讓電腦自動民調失效，造成民調的成本增加，收集的樣本數只好減少，更減低其正確性。
六、行動電話沒有區域之分，造成針對區域性的調查困難。例如現在大安區立委補選，沒辦法利用行動電話來做大安區選民的民調。
此外當使用家用電話來回答問題時，因為有家人在旁，基於隱私或保護個人意圖等因素，其回答可能會有所保留（例如當其政治傾向和家人不同時）。但
因此下次當任何民意機構公布調查結果時，我們應該要求公布抽樣的方法，包括是否有包含行動電話號碼，其比例若干等等。這樣才能判斷其民調是否準確和有偏差，否則電話民調恐怕會步入網路民調的後塵，純粹只能參考用，無法當真。（作者為東華大學資訊工程系教授）
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