by Peter T. Coleman and Robert Ferguson

Weeks after a chorus of international outrage erupted over the annexing of Crimea and the downing of Malaysia Airline's Flight 17 in pro-Russian rebel airspace in Ukraine and the death of 298 civilians, Russia is unapologetically sending new military convoys equipped with mobile artillery into "sovereign" Ukraine. With growing causalities on the ground and increasing sanctions against Russia, Vladimir Putin appears steadfast in his determination to reclaim large sections of Ukraine – in particular its industrial heartland – through intimidation and violence, while denying any but humanitarian involvement there.

This begs the question: Is Putin psychotic?

In a word, yes. Perhaps surprisingly, this is not merely due to some fatal flaw or narcissistic , but rather a syndrome that results from having too much unchecked power for too long. We call it power because it entails actually losing touch with reality. Many of the despots of our world running malevolent states, businesses, cults, sects, terrorist cells, and organizations share this particular brand of delusion. In fact, decades of research have shown that many of us in high power – the wealthy, the famous, the strong, the politically advantaged, and those in positions of high authority – tend to become increasingly susceptible to forms of power psychosis.

It works like this. The longer people remain in high power, the more they process information abstractly, perceive other people in instrumental and stereotypical terms, become more self- and less inhibited, make riskier choices, and have reduced capacities for complex social reasoning and judgment. They also become less likely to adopt someone else's perspective, are less-accurate judges of other's emotions, and recall less correct information about subordinates. They even begin to see other people as physically smaller.

In time the powerful can develop a sense of superoptimism, a form of hubris where they feel they can do or say whatever they want, often moving to evermore egregious violations, believing they can't be caught or punished. Of course this occurs within cultures, institutions and norms that allow it to run unchecked.

When the powerful find themselves in disputes with others, their delusions really kick in. People in high power tend to become very comfortable adopting a domineering conflict style and often lose the capacity to respond in other ways. They monopolize speaking time and speak out of turn, are much more likely to express their private opinions and true attitudes, and are much less affected by the expressed attitudes or attempts of others. They also pay less attention to lower-power disputants, overestimate their own power and underestimate the power of others, fail to sufficiently understand the disputes they face, and are more inclined toward breaking rules and laws.

In a study of high-level international negotiations, scholars found that the more powerful countries' negotiators typically neglected to think about power differences at all. If they did, they usually operated on the assumption that their superior aggregate power was sufficient to allow them to prevail in negotiations, and so they paid little attention to the specific types of leverage their lower-power adversaries might employ. As a result, those in high-power often lose in negotiations and conflict – they don't get what they want, waste time, and fail to create value. They get stuck in a take-it-or-leave-it or take-it-or-suffer mode. Sound familiar?

In contrast, many of our most renowned world leaders learned to swim against this tide. Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Angela Merkel, Mary Robinson, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates Leymah Gbowee and Aung San Suu Kyi, to name a few, showed much more adaptivity in conflict. Rather than holding fast to a take-it-or-suffer mode, they responded to different disputes with diverse strategies, artistry and flexibility in a manner fitting with the situation, and knew to reserve confrontation and domination for those times when it was really necessary. In other words, they had what we call high Conflict IQs. They read situations more carefully, considered their short and longer-term objectives, and then employed a variety of different strategies in order to increase the probabilities that their agenda would succeed. They knew the difference between a temporary dispute and a long-term war. They knew when to stay the course and when to change strategies.

In a series of studies being published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior this fall, we found that more adaptive leaders and managers have significantly higher levels of and well being at work, assessed through measures of satisfaction with work in general, with coworkers, job-related affective well being, and lower intentions to quit their jobs. This was even true in one study conducted with managers in South Korea, where being adaptive (using different strategies which fit different situations) even trumped a more prevalent use of cooperative, collectivist conflict strategies.

We have found that more serious problems typically arise when leaders become fixated on any one approach to conflict (such as dominance)