Why Power Goes to the Head: The Psychology of Entitlement and Impunity

Mind and society · By Dr. Saurabh Kumar, MD (Psychiatry, AIIMS New Delhi) · Consultant Neuropsychiatrist, Healthy Minds India, Patna · October 2026

Nahin kou as janma jag maahin, prabhuta paai jaahi mad naahin.
No one has been born in this world who, having gained power, was not touched by its intoxication.
Goswami Tulsidas, Shri Ramcharitmanas, Ayodhya Kand²⁰

Nine-thirty on a Saturday morning

At the Gandaboyanapalle toll plaza in Andhra Pradesh's Annamayya district, staff are sorting out two UPI payments from the vehicles in line. An MLA's SUV pulls up behind them. Within minutes, according to the toll manager, the escort vehicle's occupants break the barrier and attack staff, a 24-year-old woman employee among them. Deccan Chronicle reported that the followers were angry that a ruling-party MLA's car could be stopped at all.¹ Police registered a case; the MLA's followers filed a counter-complaint, and cross-cases are under investigation.²

Notice what set it off. Not a threat. Not an insult. A wait of a minute or two, the same wait every other driver accepts without thinking.

Tulsidas saw this four centuries ago. He used the word mad: intoxication. As a psychiatrist who has spent years treating intoxication of the chemical kind, I find the word exact. Power acts on the brain in ways that resemble a drug. It changes what we notice, what we feel for others, and what we think will happen if we break a rule. This article looks at that change, step by step, using what researchers have found and what Indian newspapers have reported this year.

What is the psychology of power?

Two points matter before we go further. First, "power" here is not only a minister's office. A station officer with a pistol, a senior doctor on a ward round, a father in a joint family and a coaching-centre owner all hold power over someone. Second, power does not create these changes from nothing. It loosens the brakes that were already there, and some people have stronger brakes than others.

Power rarely creates a bully. It removes the brakes from one. Hubris is learned slowly, one unpunished shortcut at a time.

The hubris ladder: five rungs, climbed one at a time

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to be above the law. Hubris creeps in, and it creeps in a fairly predictable order. Each rung below pairs one research finding with one event reported in Indian newspapers.

1. The perks arrive, and the body learns it is special

The psychologists Dacher Keltner, Deborah Gruenfeld and Cameron Anderson proposed in 2003 that power switches on the brain's "approach" system, the circuitry of reward and wanting. The "inhibition" system, which makes us pause and check, is turned down. Powerful people act first and think later.³

The hooter has simply replaced the beacon. A siren is a small thing. Its psychological job is large: it trains the owner to expect the road to part.

2. Other people go out of focus

In a well-known 2006 experiment, Adam Galinsky and colleagues asked volunteers to draw the letter E on their own foreheads. Those first made to feel powerful were about three times more likely to draw it the way it looks to themselves, which reads backwards to anyone facing them. Power reduces the habit of seeing from the other side.⁶ In 2014, Jeremy Hogeveen, Michael Inzlicht and Sukhvinder Obhi found that people primed to feel powerful showed less "motor resonance", the brain's quiet mirroring of another person's actions, one building block of empathy.⁷

The people in front of him had lost homes and crops. At that moment, the video suggests, they had become a crowd to be managed rather than people to be helped.

3. Rules start to feel like suggestions

As early as 1972, the psychologist David Kipnis described the "metamorphic effects of power". Managers given more power over workers came to value those workers less, kept more distance and used more pressure.⁹ Later studies linked higher social status with more rule-breaking on the road, such as cutting off pedestrians, though not every attempt to repeat those findings has succeeded, so they should be held lightly.¹⁰

A man whose duty is to enforce rules appeared, in that moment, to believe they did not reach him.

4. The entourage takes over

Power rarely acts alone. It works through followers, gunmen, relatives and staff, who often go further than the powerful person would. Psychologists call one part of this "deindividuation": inside a group that carries borrowed authority, each member feels less personally responsible. Followers also compete to show loyalty, and nothing shows loyalty like humiliating someone who "disrespected" the boss.

The Andhra Pradesh toll plaza in our opening is the textbook case. It was not the MLA but his escort who, according to the toll manager, broke the barrier and attacked the staff. The anger was about rank: how dare a booth stop our vehicle.

5. Impunity is learned

Every rule broken without cost is a lesson. The brain learns from consequences, and when consequences do not arrive, it learns that the rule was never real. The physician and former UK foreign secretary David Owen, writing with the psychiatrist Jonathan Davidson in Brain in 2009, called the end state "hubris syndrome": an acquired pattern of grandiosity, contempt for advice and loss of contact with reality, which develops after holding power and often fades once power is lost.¹²

The psychological point is not about this one family. A cover-up of that kind, if proved, is attempted only by people who have learned, over years, that systems can be bent. Note the doctors in Aundh too. Impunity needs many hands, and every person who says "no" takes a rung out of the ladder.

Why do powerful people think they can get away with breaking the law?

There is also a story they tell themselves. The table sets that story beside what research suggests.

Notice how little of this is conscious planning. Most of it feels, from the inside, like common sense. That is what makes it dangerous.

Power reveals as much as it corrupts

Power does not turn everyone into a bully. It amplifies what is already there. In 2001, Serena Chen, Annette Lee-Chai and John Bargh showed that people who naturally think of relationships as caring for others became more generous and responsible when given power. People focused on what they could get became more self-serving. The same chair produced opposite behaviour.¹⁸

Tulsidas knew this too. The same epic that says no one escapes the intoxication of power gives us Bharat, who ruled Ayodhya for fourteen years with his brother's sandals on the throne and remained untouched by it. The poem's own answer to hubris is a person who treats power as held in trust, not owned.

Power is also relative. In August 2025, staff at the Bhuni toll plaza near Meerut allegedly beat an Army jawan after an argument at the booth; NHAI fined the toll agency Rs 20 lakh and moved to debar it.¹⁹ At one booth the staff were the victims of rank; at another, they held the stick. The pattern belongs to the situation, not to a class of people.

What keeps people grounded

• Someone who can say no. An honest colleague, spouse or friend whose job is not to please. The Aundh doctors in the Porsche case played this role for a whole system.
• Real accountability. Rules enforced quickly and equally. Courts, the press and, increasingly, phone cameras are doing this work; most of the cases above came to light through a video or CCTV.
• Contact with ordinary life. Standing in queues, travelling without escorts, doing some work with one's own hands. These keep the sense of "everyone waits" alive.
• Time limits. Owen and Davidson observed that hubris tends to grow with time in power. Rotation of posts is a psychological safeguard, not only an administrative one.
• An inner practice. Reflection, prayer or meditation of any kind that returns attention to others and to one's own smallness. The Indian traditions call this vinamrata, and research on perspective-taking suggests it is trainable.

When is arrogance a medical problem?

In practice, families bring a relative to a mental health clinic in Patna not because "he has become arrogant" but because something else has changed alongside it. These are the conditions I keep in mind:

Two cautions. No one, including a psychiatrist, should diagnose a public figure from news reports or videos. And a diagnosis rarely removes legal responsibility; mostly it shapes treatment.

A two-minute "power hygiene" self-check

For anyone who holds authority over others: an officer, a manager, a teacher, a senior doctor, an elder in the family. I use a version of it on myself, because a doctor's chair is also a seat of power. Tick each line that has been true in the past month.

• I felt irritated when made to wait in a queue or follow a procedure.
• I could not remember the last time someone junior disagreed with me openly.
• I used my position, title or contacts to skip a rule, even a small one.
• I spoke to a waiter, driver, guard or junior colleague in a way I would not want filmed.
• People around me did something unfair "for me", and I did not stop them.
• I told myself that a rule was meant for ordinary people.
• My temper, drinking or sleep has changed since I took on more responsibility.

Go back to the toll booth. The whole episode turned on whether one vehicle would accept the same wait as everyone else. That is the real test of power, and it is a small, daily one. Not whether you can bend the rule, but whether you still feel, deep down, that the queue includes you.

If someone in your family has changed, becoming more aggressive, reckless, grandiose or dependent on alcohol, and it is hurting the people around them, an assessment can help separate character from illness. Healthy Minds India offers confidential consultations with Dr Saurabh Kumar in Patna and online; see our psychiatrist in Patna page or send an enquiry.

Your questions

Frequently Asked Questions

• Does power really change the brain?

  Yes, in measurable ways. Experiments show that feeling powerful reduces the brain's mirroring of other people's actions, lowers attention to others' viewpoints and increases risk-taking. These are shifts in how the brain is used, not permanent damage, and they often ease when the power is gone.

• What is hubris syndrome?

  Hubris syndrome is a term proposed by David Owen and Jonathan Davidson in 2009 for a pattern of grandiosity, contempt for advice and recklessness that develops in some people after holding power for a long time. It is not an official psychiatric diagnosis, and it often fades after the person leaves office.

• Why do some people stay humble even with great power?

  Power amplifies existing values. People who see relationships as responsibilities tend to become more generous when given authority. Honest advisers, real accountability, contact with ordinary life and a regular reflective practice also protect against hubris.

• Is arrogance a mental illness?

  Usually not. Arrogance is mostly a matter of character and circumstance. It needs medical attention when it appears suddenly, is out of character, or comes with reduced sleep, overspending, heavy drinking, memory problems or behaviour change after a head injury.

• When should a family consult a psychiatrist in Patna about a relative's changed behaviour?

  Seek an assessment if a relative has become uncharacteristically aggressive, reckless or grandiose over weeks to months, especially with sleep changes, substance use or confusion. Conditions such as bipolar disorder, alcohol use disorder and early dementia are treatable, and earlier assessment protects both the person and the family.

About this article

Written and medically reviewed by

Dr. Saurabh Kumar

• MD (Psychiatry) AIIMS New Delhi
• Associate Professor & HOD, Dept. of Psychiatry, RDJM Medical College, Muzaffarpur
• Ex-Assistant Professor, PMCH Patna
• Consultant, Healthy Minds India, Patna

Published

28 October 2026

Format

Mind and society

Focus

The psychology of power, hubris and impunity

Sources

20 references

• This article is for public education. It does not diagnose any individual, and people named in news reports are presumed innocent unless a court has ruled otherwise. Events are summarised from the published reports listed in the references; where reports differ, the more cautious account is used.
• Dr. Saurabh Kumar is the author of The Indian Mind, which links Indian psychological traditions with modern neuroscience.
• Written for general education. It does not replace an individual assessment by a qualified clinician and does not diagnose any condition. Diagrams are original illustrations prepared for this article.

© 2026 Healthy Minds India, Patna · Blog edition 1.0, October 2026