WHEN “AMERICAN Idol’’ launched its new season without Simon Cowell to good reviews last week, culture mavens wondered: Have we lost our taste for meanness?

After all, Cowell defined “Idol’’ for years with his Anglified insults, and launched a wave of TV contests with meanie foreign judges. And this new “Idol’’ panel, so far, lacks his attitude of bored contempt. The New Jersey and New Orleans auditions featured more good singers than basket cases and more praise than insults from the judges. Jennifer Lopez even moaned about the pain of crushing someone’s dream: “Why did I sign up for this? I want to go home!’’

It’s tempting to read this as a trend, a function of post-Tucson reality, when the public no longer will tolerate casual cruelty. Ricky Gervais, comedian and ran afoul of the new national mood when he hosted the Golden Globes last week, hurling nonstop insults at the Hollywood elite — even though it seemed clear that he was satirizing Hollywood’s culture of self-congratulation.

But it’s easy to reject meanness-as-entertainment and pat ourselves on the back. We’re still too quick to accept a lot of garden-variety meanness: powerful people treating less-powerful people badly, because they can.

For instance, in a study published last summer, a group of business-school researchers offered a disturbing way to think about bloated CEO pay. It turns out, it makes the boss mean.

The study examined corporate behavior of 261 companies, and found a striking correlation between pay inequality and poor treatment of workers. Companies whose CEOs made much more than their average workers — in some cases, the disparity is 400-fold — were more likely to underfund pensions or cut corners on health and safety. Often, the bosses engaged in a cost-benefit analysis, figuring that a fine would be less painful than the profits they stood to make if they got away with it.