A paradigm-shifting study of power in everyday life: how we gain it and the surprising ways we can lose it. The Machiavellian view of power as a coercive force is one of the deepest currents in our culture, yet new psychological research reveals this vision to be dead wrong. Influence is gained instead through social intelligence and empathy - but ironically the seductions of power make us lose the very qualities that made us powerful in the first place.