How does power corrupt? It starts by corrupting rational thinking.

It’s got to be one of the shortest mayoral tenures in history, and it’s certainly one of the slimiest. When Peter Cammarano III was sworn in as mayor of Hoboken, NJ, just last month, the 32-year-old wunderkind politician promised to deliver “government reform and real change for Hoboken.” Real change indeed. Three weeks later he was busted on federal corruption charges, and shortly after resigned in disgrace.

He was in bad company. A massive three-year sting operation netted 44 defendants in all, including two other mayors, two state lawmakers, and five rabbis. They were charged with taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as well as money laundering. In the words of US Attorney Ralph Marra, the defendants “existed in an ethics-free zone.”

What do we make of all this? On one level the explanation is simple greed, yet greed alone can’t explain why these pols risked so much for so little. And why was the misjudgment so widespread? Is there something about power itself that inevitably distorts human thinking and behavior? Does power give people delusions of invulnerability? In other words, if power corrupts, how does that corruption play out in the human mind?

One recent study may offer some insight into the connection between power and hubris and delusional thinking. Stanford University psychologist Nathanael Fast actually started off exploring the positive effects of power. His idea was that power creates a false sense of control over life’s events, and that this feeling of control in turn boosts self-esteem and optimism. But his findings apply just as well to prideful overconfidence. Here’s the experiment:

Fast and his colleagues used a well-tested laboratory technique to prime some volunteers’ sense of power. Then they used a clever test to see if these feelings of power influenced their sense of control over random events. They had all the volunteers play a dice game to see if they could win a prize, and they were allowed to either roll the dice themselves or to let someone else roll the dice. A roll of dice is random, no matter who rolls them, so those who chose to roll the dice were displaying an unrealistic sense of control over random events.

The results were unambiguous. As reported in the journal Psychological Science, each and every one of the volunteers who was primed for power (compared to controls who were not) grabbed the dice. They had the delusional belief that, by rolling the dice themselves, they could control the outcome.

So what does this have to do with corruption in Hoboken? Well, the young mayor’s election certainly boosted his feelings of power as much as any laboratory gimmick. How intoxicating for someone just 32 years old. And it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that his new-found power inflated his sense of control as well. He never stopped to think rationally about the risks of his actions, because in his mind he was in control and there was no risk. He was literally above the law, both man’s law and the laws of chance.

The psychologists did another version of the experiment to double-check this finding. In this case, the volunteers imagined running a fictional marketing agency, and were asked to estimate their ability to make the company profitable. This is just another way of assessing delusional control, because they didn’t know enough about the company or the market to make a rational judgment. Even so, those primed for power truly believed they could turn profits–magically. This false sense of control boosted traits like self-esteem and optimism and take-charge attitude. But as the authors note, the flip sides of these traits are hubris and self-centered confidence and unrealistic judgment. The parallels to the New Jersey corruption case are not difficult to draw.

These aren’t isolated findings. As Fast explained in an interview, they are consistent with many other studies on the corrupting effects of power. Those studies show that power leads to uninhibited and selfish action, and a blinkered focus on personal rewards. They also show that power creates a strong need for ego gratification, especially among the emotionally insecure, which in turn boosts arrogance and aggression.

All of this evidence taken together also sheds light on why these public officials took such risks for what are really piddling sums of cash. It’s not about the money really. It’s about the distorted psychological dynamics of power. Having power causes people to view other people as tools for achieving their egotistic goals. Right now, it appears those tools are the citizens of the Garden State.