The human brain cannot easily cope with very high levels of power. Why?

It’s doubtul the Fifa president feels himself constrained by anything bigger than his ego

The human brain cannot easily cope with very high levels of power. Why? Because having control over what thousands or millions of people want, need or fear is a heady neurochemical intoxicant that can, unless checked, unbalance brain function via the testosterone and dopamine systems.

This has distressingly predictable effects: narcissism; loss of empathy; poor judgment; low risk perception; manipulation of others; confusion of personal and organisational interests; use of the ‘royal we’; hypocrisy ; unethical behaviour; unquenchable appetite for ever more power.giving power to individuals who have a strong set of internal moral or ethical constraints. You can detect such people by the modest but not overwhelming appearance in their free speech of words like ‘not’, ‘shouldn’t’, ‘can’t’ or ‘don’t’.

You don’t hear these much on the rare occasions Infantino deigns to speak to the press. Of course, such potential leaders must have a healthy appetite for power but they must also have, if they are to be protected from power-brain-disruption, the sense that there is something bigger than them, whether that’s the law, a principle or a set of values. I doubt the Fifa president feels himself constrained by anything that is bigger than his ego.

The second way of curbing the curse of power is by external constraints. Hence the human genius inventions of democracy, a free press, an independent judiciary, constitutions and so on.

And that’s why the first act of a would-be dictator is almost always to dismantle these tiresome constraints on his power, as, for example, Infantino’s offer of up to $40 million to football associations who signed up to his privatisation plan by September 19th was an example of how he manipulates the global governance structures of Fifa to free himself of petty external constraints on his actions. We all create our own realities to some extent, shaped by whom we choose to mix with and what we read and hear, and media algorithms have accelerated this process.

But great power – political, celebrity or financial – can seal us into our reality capsule more completely than any social media feed. This is a Trump-world reality where anything you don’t want to hear is ‘fake news’ and the truth is what the most powerful person says it is.

Infantino and his cabal created their own distorted reality, their attention so focused on vast wealth and power that they blinded themselves to the fact that there are more noble values and realities clinging on in this wonderful global sport. Ian Robertson is emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin and author of How Confidence Works and The Winner EffectWe’re not the best or worst, but we could be great if we were as brave as our emigrantsWill Ireland continue to take TikTok’s money after M9 crash?

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