辞海查询:The Caligula Effect: Why Powerful Men Compulsively Cheat

Human males have never been thought of as models of sexual restraint —and with good reason. From the moment the adolescent libido begins toboot up, boys seem to enter an ongoing state of emotional — if notliteral — priapism, from which they never fully emerge.

As far as nature is concerned, this is just fine. The goal of anyorganism, after all, is to ensure the survival and propagation of itsgenes, and males — far more so than females — are eminently equipped todo that. Even the world's most reproductively prolific mothers rarelyproduce more than eight or nine children in a lifetime. Males canconceive everyday, even multiple times a day, and come emotionallyhardwired to do just that.

Part of the reason they don't, apart from the impracticality oftrying to raise a brood of 200 children, is that they just don't getthat many mating opportunities. Sex requires a willing partner, andfemales, with so much more on the line in terms of the time, effort andenergy that pregnancy and child-rearing involve, can be extremelyselective in choosing mates. That requires males to develop a wholesuite of emotional muscles — self-denial, self-restraint, a facility fordelayed gratification — that will help them cope with an appetite thatat some levels will never be fully satisfied. And that, in turn, is acentral pillar of monogamy and fidelity.

But what happens when the lid comes off? What happens when theopportunities are unlimited? In some cases, not much. Males eithercontinue to practice self-control or, after a brief period of happydebauchery — think rock stars or leading men who are always seenstepping out with a new piece of arm candy —  finally settle down intostable monogamy.

In some cases, though, the stability never happens; in some cases,unlimited opportunity simply leads to unlimited appetites. Emperors anddespots may be best known for this kind of behavior. The 18th-centuryMoroccan ruler Moulay Ismail is said to have fathered 888 children withhis 500 concubines. Genghis Khan makes Ismail look practically barren. A2003 analysis of the Y chromosome of 2,123 men now living across theformer Mongol empire showed that there are 16 million males living todaywhose line stretches back to the great conqueror — or one out of every200 males now on the planet. But modern-day men of power — Donald Trump,Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, John Ensign, JFK, FDR, andmost recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn — withtheir serial wives or serial philandering, can behave just as badly, ifless prolifically.

"When men have more opportunity they tend to act on thatopportunity," says psychologist Mark Held, a private practitioner in theDenver area who specializes in male sexuality and the problems ofoverachievers. "The challenge becomes developing ways to control theimpulses so you don't get yourself into self-defeating situations."

There are a lot of things that distinguish pampered and powerful menwho behave themselves sexually from those who don't. Part of it issimply underlying temperament. Bill Clinton and Harry Truman weredecidedly different people in the rectitude department, even if both ofthem were once the most powerful person in the world. There's no sayingwith certainty what led to Clinton's sometimes frantic need to be likedand his maddening lack of any internal governor — his broken home, hisabusive stepfather, his admitted issues with low self-esteem that camefrom being seen as the chubby kid from the school band — but otherleaders have hard-knock pasts too and not all of them become lotharios.

"It's sometimes framed as a case of character, but it can also besomeone's sexual makeup," says Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the sexualdisorders clinic at Johns Hopkins University. "There's a basicbiological factor at play. Sex is a powerful force and some people justhave to struggle more to control it than others."

Narcissists are clearly part of the poor-control camp. One of thethings that made John Edwards a hard electoral sell well before hisaffair was revealed was the visceral sense people got that he was simplytoo much of a self-adoring preener. There would be no level of publicadoration he could achieve that would reach the level he felt forhimself. But in some cases, narcissism is not the only thing going on.

"There's a fairly new measure we use that's called 'the dark side,'"says Larry Josephs, a professor of psychology at Adelphi University."It's a combination of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy."Garden variety cads like Edwards clearly aren't psychopathic, butworld-class monsters like Caligula — whose sexual appetites were legend —just as clearly were. All three features of the dark side personalitycan exist in people in different combinations and different degrees, butthe more severe any one of them is, the greater the risk for sexualacting out. "Men who are low on these traits are less likely to cheateven when the opportunity presents itself," says Josephs.

Also in play is the point in life at which unusual privilege wasfirst conferred. Members of royal families are born into a world ofindulgence and entitlement, and the princelings who grow up that way maynever have to develop the emotional musculature that will allow them toshow self-restraint. Athletes often start life at the opposite end ofthe wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusualtalent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find thatthe rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through schooland into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked orcovered up. Any skills they may have been developing for self-control orself-denial quickly wither.

"People who come into fame or power later in life do seem to managetheir circumstances more effectively," says Berlin. "They've learned acertain discipline and they've adapted to having to contain themselves."

Men, certainly, aren't the only people who abuse their powersexually. Women exhibit the dark-side triad too, and can becomeaccustomed to power and its perks as easily as a man can. What's more,testosterone, a primal driver of dominance behavior, is not theexclusive province of men either. "Women produce testosterone just likemen do, even if at different levels," says Josephs. "That means womenhave testosterone-driven tendencies as well, and that pays dividends.Dominant animals tend to be more reproductively successful whetherthey're male or female."

But if alpha men and women dominate both the world and the gene pool,that's not to say betas don't have ways to push back. Among all socialanimals, leaders are tolerated only until what they give back to thegroup in terms of stability and order is exceeded by what they take fromit, in terms of material and mating resources. When the balance tipsthe wrong way, the group gets restless.

"We have what we call subordinate strategies, and we see that inchimps and bonobos too," says Josephs. "You don't want the leaderdominating all of the mating opportunities, so you form coalitions andtopple him."

That same phenomenon, Josephs believes, may explain the publicoutrage when sexual misbehavior of elites — particularly the kind thatinvolves violence or assault — become public. "We don't want our leadersto be philanderers," he says. "In an egalitarian society, nobody shouldmonopolize all of the females or sleep with our wives, or we're goingto get even."

In the case of Edwards or Spitzer, that meant banishment to apolitical Elba. In the case of Strauss-Kahn, it may well mean jail. Inthe case of Caligula, it meant assassination. It's been said formillennia, but it bears repeating: just keep it zipped, boys, just keepit zipped.