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EVERY week or so, US President Barack Obama’s security chiefs give him a list of terror suspects based in Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan, along with biographies and pictures. From this shortlist Obama personally authorises which suspects should be taken out by remote predator drones. The first strike he ordered happened three days after he took office and he was reportedly extremely upset when a number of children were inadvertently killed in the attack.

At this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the president continued his now famous series of light-hearted singing and jokey press outings with a warning to boy band the Jonas Brothers about his daughters: “Sasha and Malia are huge fans but, boys, don’t be getting any ideas. I have two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking?”

More recently, he was suspected of sexual innuendo when speaking in Beverley Hills. He said: “I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in push-ups – but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down.” According to the reporters’ pool, the president let the line “hang, naughtily”.

No one is sure whether the double-entendre was intentional or not, but at the very least there was a lack of scrutiny to avoid innuendo. Whatever the truth, this is consistent with a more “loosened up” presidential persona, which may be part of an election plan to soften the rather aloof, professorial style that characterised his early presidency.

But another interpretation is possible. The predator drone gag was humorous, but if you or I were given the task of deciding who would die that week – with the possibility of also killing innocent children – would we not find it hard to joke about such strikes?

Consider this. The nearly four years he has spent as the most powerful man in the world has almost certainly reshaped Obama’s brain and personality. Power increases testosterone levels, which in turn increases the uptake of dopamine in the brain’s reward network. The results are an increase in egocentricity and a reduction in empathy ().

“The time as the world’s most powerful man has reshaped Obama’s brain”

The tasteless joke about the predator drones was in line with the sort of decline in empathy that even small amounts of power can trigger. Similarly, if he did intend the sexual innuendo in his press-ups joke, that kind of disinhibition would also be characteristic of power’s effects on the brain. Even tiny amounts of power, such as being allowed to grade the performance of your partner in a social psychology experiment, changes behaviour.

This can be seen in research by and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, who showed that when a hierarchical group is presented with a plate of cookies, “the boss” is much more likely to take the last one, and eat it with an open mouth, scattering debris and leaving crumbs on their face. These behaviours are not features of a bad upbringing or sloppy personality; if the same person was part of the group, they would be more likely to eat demurely.

Like many neurotransmitters in the brain, dopamine operates in an “inverted U” shape, where either too little or too much can impair the co-ordinated functioning of the brain. Through its cocaine-like disruption of the brain’s reward system, unfettered power leads to real problems of judgement, emotional functioning, self-awareness and inhibition.

Unfettered power can also trigger narcissism and a mentality along the lines of the “hubris syndrome” that the former British cabinet minister David Owen identified, where power becomes an intoxicating drug for politicians. And the bizarre behaviour of dictators like Muammar Gaddafi cannot easily be explained in terms of pre-existing personality traits: it is much easier to interpret in terms of the unbalancing effects of power on the brain.

The tools of democracy – free elections, limited terms of office, an independent judiciary and a free press – were developed in part to combat the effects of excessive power on leaders. Even the Chinese change their leaders every 10 years. But it is not just political leaders who are affected – hundreds of millions of people have power over others through their jobs.

Nathanael Fast and colleagues at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business discovered that some bosses who have a lot of power over their underlings behave decently while others abuse their position by behaving aggressively. Why is this? Fast discovered that power makes bullies of people who feel inadequate in the role of boss. With power comes the need to perform under the close and critical scrutiny of underlings, peers and bosses. Such power energises and smartens some, but it stresses others who might have functioned well in a less powerful position. The Japanese prime minister is a good example. He resigned in 2007 after just one year in office, with severe stress playing a major part.

Other leaders may have too big an appetite for power. Former British prime minister Tony Blair is arguably a recent example, where an appetite for power led to disastrous judgements, principally the invasion of Iraq. And Vladimir Putin, who will have been in continuous power as Russian president or prime minister for 18 years by the time he finishes his current term, arguably shows alarming symptoms of the neurological consequences of excessive power, such as a taste for photographs of himself bare chested or with tigers or bears.

This, then, is the conundrum: we need strong leaders with an appetite for power and who can benefit from its anti-depressant effects while being able to negotiate the stresses, decisions and loneliness of leadership. Power feels good because it uses the same reward network as cocaine and sex. As we watch our leaders become rapidly grey and lined with the stress of office, we recognise that they need to be rewarded and motivated by power to stay the course and handle the complex challenges of the 21st century. At the same time, they need protecting from the toxic effects of the world’s most seductive neurological drug.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell that power is to human relationships what energy is to physics. Yet the effects of power on the brains of leaders is one of the great under-considered variables in life. In the very near future, the neurological and psychological effects of power must become part of our discourse about leaders, bosses, professors, doctors – and all the other roles in which individuals are given charge of resources which others want, need or fear.

Of course power’s effects are not all negative. It makes people smarter and more inclined to think abstractly and strategically. Power emboldens by reducing anxiety and raising mood, and it gives people a greater appetite for risk. This makes sense evolutionarily: as a species that goes in for hierarchically organised groups, leadership or dominance should enhance strategic thinking, reduce anxiety and allow leaders room to inspire others to keep up to the mark. We cannot use leaders who are paralysed by a surfeit of empathy. Which general would make the right decision if he emotionally engaged with the suffering of every soldier or civilian?

So Obama’s drone joke is understandable enough, however distasteful it may be to those of us unchanged by mega-doses of power. A US president can only stay in office for eight years. Now we know that there are good biological reasons for this as well as political ones.