With great power comes great responsibility…or more changed relationship dynamics? It’s not uncommon to see the romanticisation of powerful people, portraying them with a fierce passion in literature and movies. Whether it is the brooding billionaire CEO in your favourite K-drama or the smug captain of the football team in a rom-com book, these fictional characters easily amass a large fanbase.

But power is much darker in reality and not all rosy and romantic. Power transforms one, boosting more confidence and commanding authority. This makes powerful people more likely to cheat. A study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior elaborated on how powerful people are likely to stray from their relationships and cheat. Faithfulness to a spouse is connected to self-perception. And power outweighs everything in their self-perception, even love and respect.

Connection between power and loyalty

Psychologists from Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and the US-based University of Rochester tried to uncover how power changes the game in relationship dynamics and loyalty. Power makes a person not only confident but also more impulsive with a superiority complex, acting on their whims to assert themselves. And with the kind of resources they have, they can easily mitigate any potential consequences.

This particularly becomes more sinister in a relationship as this exaggerated, entitled self-perception of power develops a dynamic where the powerful partner may feel they bring more value and substance to the table and think they can do better.

Lead author Gurit Birnbaum, a professor of psychology at Reichman University, said, “In a romantic relationship, these power dynamics might lead the more powerful partner to think they bring more to the table than their less powerful partner. The more powerful might see this as a sign that they have more options outside the relationship and are more desirable partners in general.”

The dark side of power in a relationship

The researchers conducted a set of tests to understand how power can create turmoil in the relationship. They were able to detect a clear pattern across all four tests that power changed the way they perceived other potential partners, including sexual fantasies, desires, and real-life interactions. People who saw themselves as more powerful were curious about other potential matches outside their relationships.

Co-author Harry Reis, professor in the Rochester Department of Psychology and the University’s Dean’s professor, elaborated, “Those with a higher sense of power may feel motivated to disregard their commitment to the relationship and act on desires for short-term flings or potentially other, more novel partners if the opportunity arises.”

The most destructive thing is when the people who consider themselves powerful think they are more valuable and better than their partner. This belief weakens commitment. It also goes beyond the boundaries of loyalty and turns bitter with outright disrespect based on who has more access to resources.

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