Top: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
Bottom: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez

He may be the most powerful man in the world, but Barack Obama seems determined not to act like it. Making his official international debut at the G20 summit in London recently, the new president laid out a striking manifesto of modesty. "We exercise our leadership best when we are listening," he declared, "when we recognize that the world is a complicated place and that we are going to have to act in partnership with other countries, when we lead by example, when we show some element of humility and recognize that we may not always have the best answer…."

Rhetorically, it was a radical U-turn from the Bush-Cheney administration's "our way or the highway" approach. So, too, have been President Obama's bipartisan outreach and his attempt to assemble a "team of rivals" cabinet.

Skeptics warn that Obama's kinder, gentler face of power is a mere masquerade. After all, his chief of staff and chosen enforcer is Rahm Emanuel, who D.C. insiders used to say was so imperious that a special trauma ward was needed to treat the people who had worked with him. (Among his infamous legacies is a restaurant scene in which, issuing a political vendetta against each enemy he felt had double-crossed his then-boss Bill Clinton, Emanuel repeatedly plunged a steak knife into the table, shouting "Dead! Dead! Dead!") Nor is Obama himself considered immune to ego, according to one recent Wall Street Journal column, which carried the ominous headline, "The President Is 'Keeping Score': Chicago politics has moved into the White House." The column's author should know a thing or two about the ruthless machinations of power—his name is Karl Rove.

Clearly Obama espouses a new era in which power is tempered by grace. But achieving that is a much trickier feat, as researchers who examine power dynamics can readily attest. Each news cycle provides validation of what Charles Beard once labeled the first lesson of history: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power."

The questions of who obtains power and why it so often prompts brazen, impulsive, selfish, and reckless behavior are behind dozens of influential studies at Berkeley. What researchers are discovering is that in psychological and even physiological ways, imbibing the elixir of power strips away people's inhibitions. The effect on their behavior happens at a subconscious level and mimics alcoholic inebriation and even brain damage—which may explain why powerful people so often leave us wondering, "What were they thinking?" We've heard of CEOs winging in on private jets to beg for bailouts; Wall Street executives using taxpayer money to award themselves fat bonuses; Eliot Spitzer, as prostitution "Client No. 9," balking at wearing a condom; presidential candidate John Edwards campaigning with an on-the-payroll mistress and a cancer-stricken wife; actor Christian Bale spewing 43 profanities at a crew member who had the temerity to walk through his line of sight; and uber-demanding bosses such as Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin reportedly hiring and firing 250 assistants in just five years.

Not that we require famous examples to understand that powerful people can be thoughtless and clueless. The evidence is all around us every day: The teacher who, during a student's oral presentation, dug wax out of his ear and held it up for scrupulous examination. The professor who, while meeting with graduate students, hoisted his bare feet onto his desk and commenced clipping his toenails. The corporate boss who interrupted an office meeting by peeing into a corner sink in the conference room. Not to mention all the supervisors, spouses, and significant others who declare, in one way or another, "Do it my way or else."

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