Conscience vs. Desire for Power

As a second semester senior I am taking the SAT again and am taking classes. Today I wrote a practice essay in which the prompt asked if selfish motivation for money, fame, and power was stronger than a person's conscience. For arguments sake I said that a person's selfish desires were more powerful and used the Underground Man as an example. I argued that the underground man's need to feel power over Liza caused him to act in spite of her. He knew that what he was doing would hurt her, but decided to do it anyway because it was more important to him that his pride stay intact. His desire for power outweighed  his conscience.