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It's a matter of leverage. It's all a bit complicated:
When you apply force to the handlebars, that creates torque through the steerer proportional to the distance between your hands and the steerer axis. At the other end of the steerer, the fork and the wheel act as a lever between the steerer axis and the contact patch, converting the torque into a force vector at the contact patch that's proportional to the distance between contact patch and steering axis. (when vertical, straight steering, this = trail * sin(headangle). When you lean and turn, this distance changes.)
The motion resulting from this torque depends on a lot of things, including weight distribution, contact patch shape and pressure, speed, lean, initial steering angle and flex/twist in the bars, stem, steerer, fork, axle, spokes, rim, sidewall...
When you shorten the stem, assuming your hands are in front of the steerer, you reduce your leverage. On the other hand, your weight distribution might shift rearwards and your arms might be able to apply more force.
edit: paging @mdcc_tester for peer review
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guys, can a short stem "ruin" the handling of a road bike?
No.
Ignore the whole hubs bullshit, just fit a shorter stem that feel right (as in no longer stretched out and can easily keep your head up).
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Emyr
edscoble
@jBola
guys, can a short stem "ruin" the handling of a road bike?
9cm is not that short but putts the handlebar a bit behind the front hub and when i am turning at low speed after a few degrees it feels heavy and the handlebar and wheel wants to turn on its own somehow (i'm probably not explaining very well)
for the record, before i had a 12cm stem and dont recall this happening, but i was tooooo streched thats why i changed to 9,