To people who don’t care about power, watching others who do can present a puzzle. You might wonder who cares if you get to boss people around as long as you can tend to your own affairs. Are power-grabbers driven by feelings of insecurity, a lack of humanity, or just the desire to see how far they can go?

When you contrast these people with the ones who seem completely oriented toward working hard to benefit others, their psychological makeup may seem diametrically opposed. Again, thinking of people you know, directly or indirectly, it’s clear that these kind souls would do anything to have their efforts improve the lives of others. They may have spent years working for a charitable cause, rising through the ranks of volunteers, until now they are able to spread their influence over a wide range of people and situations. What drives these selfless individuals?

Distinguishing Antisocial From Prosocial Behaviors: Not So Easy

As divergent as these two groups of people may seem to be, a new study by University of Leeds’ Keven Joyal-Desmairis and colleagues (2024) suggests that they may share some surprisingly basic qualities. To begin with, the authors define antisocial behaviors as those that include a range of undesirable acts from playing pranks to lying, stealing, insulting others, and acting rudely. These acts could be planned or unplanned and can include simple negligence (harming people due to lack of regard for them). Prosocial behaviors, by contrast, include helping, donating money or time, comforting a friend, and engaging in acts that benefit the environment. These, too, can be deliberately planned or unintentionally good.

From this listing of the polarities of the continuum, it wouldn’t seem as though there is any common ground. However, as Joyal-Desmairis et al. point out, there are common “etiologies” or causes despite some distinct differences. Most importantly, these commonalities involve the tendency to act impulsively (disinhibition), as in acting reflexively to help—or harm—another person. They can also include fear of negative self-evaluations, where people wish to maintain their self-esteem. Maybe, though, the two orientations share a seemingly incongruous set of motivations in the desire to promote oneself. Perhaps you’ve asked yourself this question from time to time if you’ve noticed someone who achieves international fame for “do-gooder” acts and wonder if their quest to help the world is a quest to help themselves.

Testing the Lust for Power in the Good and the Bad

With these ideas in mind, the British research team set out to discover if they could find the potential linkages between anti- and prosocial behaviors somewhere inside the dimension of self- vs. other-motivations. Recognizing that there can be cultural influences on all of these qualities, Joyal-Desmairis and colleagues took advantage of four existing datasets on 176,216 individuals across 78 countries. Although the exact measures differed across samples, they all included standard instruments designed to assess the two types of motivation.

These sample items capture the qualities of each construct:

Other-focus

1. I am affectionate (communality).
2. I am understanding (communality).
3. My happiness depends on the happiness of those around me (interdependent self-construal).
4. I keep an eye out for others’ interests (other-interest).
5. I like to make as many friends as I can (affiliation).
6. I desire to have a close, intimate relationship with someone (intimacy).
7. I take an interest in other people’s lives (compassion).
8. I strongly value the traditional practices of my culture.
9. It is important to always behave properly.
10. It is important to do something for the good of society.

Prosocial behaviors (last 30 days):

1. Performed voluntary/community service
2. Donated blood, plasma, or platelets
3. Served as active members of environmental or charitable organizations
4. Given money to charity
5. Delayed an elevator and held the door open for a stranger
6. Feeling it’s wonderful to assist others in need
7. Volunteering time to help others who have work-related problems

Self-focus

1. I defend my own beliefs (assertiveness).
2. I am independent (independence).
3. I have a strong personality (assertiveness).
4. It is important to me to make my own decisions about my life (self-focus).
5. If someone hits me, I hit back (aggression).
6. I enjoy being unique and different from others in many respects (Independent self-construal).
7. I keep an eye out for my own interests (self-interest).
8. I want to be able to exert influence (power).
9. My goal is to do at least a little bit more than anyone else has done before (achievement).

Antisocial behaviors (last 30 days)

1. Committed theft or property damage
2. Pulled a knife or gun on someone
3. Physically injured another person
4. Threatened people I know
5. Stole something belonging to someone at work
6. Hurt someone badly enough in a physical fight that he/she needed care from a doctor or nurse
7. Engaged in financial fraud, domestic violence, or stealing property

Across five analyses, the authors found consistent support for the positive association between other-focused orientation and prosocial behaviors and a negative association between other-focused orientation and antisocial behaviors. This, at least was clear.

Less clear were the associations between self-focused attitudes and antisocial attitudes, which varied across countries and studies, suggesting that certain socio-political or cultural factors can account for cross-national differences in the association between the two types of behaviours.

However, further digging into the components of the self-focused measures suggested another explanation. Perhaps it’s not enough to specify that you’re not “other-” focused when you’re focused on the self. Maybe it’s important to distinguish, the authors propose, between that self-focus, which is oriented toward “skill-building, personal mastery, self-improvement, and autonomy seeking,” which may reflect “adaptive patterns.”

It’s the second domain of self-focus that, instead, creates the problematic set of relationships. People high in power and self-interest at the expense of others, without seeking personal growth, are the ones whose behavior is “furthest from seeking the welfare of others.”

By the same token, it’s possible to break other-focus down into its component part of wanting to promote the well-being of others more generally from wanting to have close interpersonal relationships. Indeed, there can be times when an other-focus requires that some temporary “harm” may be inflicted on those you care about, such as in the case of vaccinating a child. This will hurt, but it is oriented toward the greater good of protecting the child, and others, from disease. Self- and other-focus could also run into each other at times when you want to protect those you love from outside forces that would harm them. In that moment, your other-focus shifts from humanity as a whole to those closest to you.

The upshot of these analyses, consistent with the goal of the study, was the demonstration of an other-focus as a generally more prosocial approach to life. Self-focus can also be put to improve the lives of others, such as those people who rise to fame for their humanitarian work when it derives from a growth orientation rather than sheer dominance.

A New Understanding of the Antisocial

This comprehensive and important study provides new insights into the motivations of the power-hungry and dominant. Wanting to express yourself, feel autonomous, and be assertive is not in and of itself at the heart of psychopathic behavior. Instead, the psychopath is motivated to seek pure power and domination. The person who will lie, steal, cheat, and physically harm people has no interest in personal development or growth.

To sum up, being able to separate people whose rise to fame involves humanitarian goals from those whose are precisely the opposite can help you gain an important understanding of what makes those two groups tick as you ponder the “whys” if not the “hows” of people who seem to revel in exercising their power. Selfishness without a desire for growth is a recipe for not only destructive behavior but also behavior that can interfere with the fulfillment of those who are in their way.