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Biochemistry and Power-Seeking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Richard E. Vatz  and
Lee S. Weinberg
Richard E. Vatz
Affiliation:
Department of Communications, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204-7097, Graduate School of Public and, International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
Lee S. Weinberg
Affiliation:
Department of Communications, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204-7097, Graduate School of Public and, International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
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Abstract

Efforts to link mental illness to biochemical events in the brain have recently been receiving greater attention by mental health professionals. Research linking political behaviors to chemical-neurological statuses could potentially revolutionize political science. In earlier writings, Douglas Madsen argued that power-seeking has been discovered to have a biological marker, and that this discovery portends “a major new direction in the behavioral study of power.” Madsen's research is seriously flawed by conceptual imprecision, inadequate operationalization, faulty premises and inferences, and misrepresentations of the earlier work of power theorists and Type A theorists who provide the central underpinnings on which his research is based. Until corrected, these flaws make meaningful testing of “power-seeking” and biochemical correlates impossible.

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Further Commentaries
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , August 1991 , pp. 69 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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