Scientific Proof That Power Distorts Reality

A clock-watching boss doesn't always perceive time the same way his employees do. Image by Thinkstock.

By Ali Eaves

If your boss regularly expects you to log 36 hours of work in a day, you're not alone.

Power actually distorts a person's perception of time, says new research from the University of California.

In the UC Berkeley research, social psychologist Serena Chen studied the effects of power on time perception by conducting surveys of 557 men and women. Some were students. Others were recruited through an online crowdsourcing forum run by Amazon Web Services called Mechanical Turk, and were paid a small fee to participate.

MORE: Seven deadly workplace sins

The volunteers filled out three questionnaires designed to gauge their sense of power and their perspective on time. They ranked themselves on such queries as: "Time is slipping away;" "My future is infinite;" and "I have a lot of time in which to get things done."

Managers feel like they have more minutes at their disposal, while workers without power feel the opposite, according to the study. That’s because people at the top of the pecking order think they have control over their time.

GALLERY: How stress makes you fat

And actually, they’re kind of right: bosses are able to extend a deadline or cancel a meeting at will, the researchers say, but lower-rung employees don’t have that kind of clout.

Unfortunately for you, powerful people also severely underestimate the time required to complete a task, says a study from the U.K. It’s probably because they focus too narrowly on the end goal, rather than the steps required getting there, researchers speculate.

So how can you get the big guy to rein in his expectations? Draw his attention away from the main objective by asking more questions that focus on the process at hand.

GALLERY: Survive office happy hour