Arrogance syndrome refers to people who experience personality changes when they hold leadership positions, this can happen in business, politics, or any other area.
This syndrome describes how those in power show extreme pride, overconfidity, and total contempt for others. These traits lead to impulsive and often destructive behavior.
- From a neuroscientist point of view.
- There is no evidence that there may be a physiological change in these people.
- However.
- Psychiatry and psychology address this problem.
It should not be considered a disorder in itself or a subtype of narcissistic personality disorder, it is an image or syndrome derived from excessive power that does not show the same development as a personality disorder.
The term hybris or hybris ?????, is a Greek concept meaning “excess”. It’s the opposite of sobriety and moderation. The arrogant person is one with excessive pride, who treats others with insolence and contempt. he is pleased to use his power in this way, but this dishonorable behavior has been firmly condemned in ancient Greece.
Research on this phenomenon has become more serious and academic in the hands of David Owen, minister in the Labor government of James Callaghan, and psychiatrist Jonathan Davidson.
For Owen, arrogance syndrome is often seen as a natural, if not unexpected, extension of the confidence and ambition that power seekers need. While many may see arrogance as an unfortunate side of leaders, they also believe that at least a certain level of arrogance is the price to pay for good leadership.
Power is an intoxicating drug, against which not all leaders have the rooted character to fight. Doing so requires a combination of common sense, humor, decency, skepticism and even cynicism, which treats power for what it is: a privileged opportunity to influence and sometimes determine the turn of events.
Owen specifically describes Hubris syndrome as a unique and acquired personality disorder that only develops after a leader has held power for a while. In addition, it is only applicable in the absence of a history of psychiatric illness.
A sample of the 14 symptoms of Hubris syndrome identified by David Owen includes:
In examining these symptoms, Owen and Davidson observed an overlap with other personality disorders, and he overlapned primarily with narcissistic personality disorder.
Seven of the 14 symptoms are also symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and 2 symptoms are part of antisocial personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.
Owen and Davidson have studied the psychological profiles of UK prime ministers and US presidents in power over the past 100 years, looking for examples of the characteristics of this syndrome.
They met with seven U. S. presidents who demonstrated decisive arrogance: the two Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush, however, the only one of these presidents in which Hubris syndrome was most clearly identified was Bush.
UK prime ministers included Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. They all showed signs of excessive pride, but only Lloyd George, Chamberlain, Thatcher and Blair fully demonstrated it. Arrogance syndrome.
Prime Ministers and Presidents are practical sources of study because of the large amount of biographical information available about them, however, Hubris Syndrome is tied to power and therefore anyone in positions of power, such as CORPORATE CEOs, can suffer from this syndrome.
The great Bertrand Russell had already identified the phenomenon that something was wrong with a person’s mental stability when he was in power. He described the causal link between power and aberrant behavior, calling it “the poisoning of power. “
This leads us to believe that there are people with honest behaviors who, given the accumulation of power over the years, end up being corrupt, so in any developed society any sign of despotism must be controlled with a social and political system that delimits. the power that rests on a person.