Things I've Learned About Personality From Studying Political Leaders at a Distance 1
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19278816 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David G Winter (0000-0002-6490-7467, University of Michigan, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 557-584 |
| Publication date | 2005-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3506 • E-ISSN: 1467-6494 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00321.x |
| PMID | 15854006 |
| OpenAlex | W2127968802 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 32 |
| References cited | 49 |
Studying the personalities of political leaders requires methods of measuring personality at a distance. One such method is content analysis of speeches, interviews, and other texts. This article reviews the author's research on achievement, affiliation, and power motives of U.S. presidents and other leaders and draws the following conclusions: (1) motivation and personality can be objectively and reliably measured at a distance; (2) personality is complex, consisting of several different elements or kinds of variables (e.g., motives and cognitions as well as traits); (3) personality exists in social contexts, and past social contexts are embodied in personality; (4) political behaviors and outcomes can be predicted from personality, but only in contingent (“if/then”) ways
Big Five personality traits · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Personality · Personality psychology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · History, Medicine, and Leadership · Psychological Testing and Assessment · Psychology · Social Psychology
Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2004-2005
Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency
PersonalityThe authors would like to thank William McKinley Runyan for his helpful suggestions on the first edition of this chapter.
Content Analysis
Individuals in Securitization
Foreign Policy in the Fourth Dimension (FP4D)
Leader Influence in Role Selection Choices
Brexit and Political Personality
The Role of Political Leaders’ Emotions in Shaping International Rivalries
Friends with text as data benefits
Regulation as the art of intuitive judgment
Leadership Style and International Norm Violation
Presidential Personality
Turkey’s Erdoğan
Measuring Politicians’ Public Personality Traits Using Computational Text Analysis
Taking Matters into Their Own Hands
Personalizing Politics
The role of motivation, responsibility, and integrative complexity in crisis escalation
The profits of personality
Linguistic Agency and Life-Span Longevity
The Authoritarian Personality in Emerging Adulthood
Assessing the Effects of Personal Characteristics and Context on U.S. House Speakers’ Leadership Styles, 1789-2006
How personalized and socialized power motivation facilitate antisocial and prosocial decision-making
Philosopher‐King or Polarizing Politician? A Personality Profile of Barack Obama
Two Years of Ups and Downs
Personality or Role? Comparisons of Turkish Leaders Across Different Institutional Positions
A Motivational Analysis of Russian Presidents, 1994–2018
Liberal and Conservative Values
Individual Differences and Political Contexts –The Role of Personality Traits and Direct Democracy in Explaining Political Protest
What can software tell us about political candidates
Pleasing the “Bubble
Presidential Personality and Foreign Policy Decision-Making
RN, the memoirs of Richard Nixon.
Motivating economic achievement
Asian Power and Politics
The achieving society.
Traits and motives
Against All Enemies - Inside America's War On Terror
Motivation and Personality
Making it Perfectly Clear
Legacy of Injustice
The Five‐Factor Model In Personality
And Keep Your Powder Dry
Personality as traits
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys
Toward a science of personality psychology
The American People
In Search of Nixon
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
Asian Power and Politics
An Exploratory Study of the Motives of Southern African Political Leaders Measured at a Distance
The Assessment of Political Personality
Where "Does" the Buck Stop
The Personalities of Bush and Gorbachev at a Distance
The Personalities of Bush and Gorbachev Measured at a Distance
Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders
Conditional hedges and the intuitive psychology of traits
Power, affiliation, and war
Leader appeal, leader performance, and the motive profiles of leaders and followers
Sources of adult motives in patterns of parent behavior in early childhood
A conditional approach to dispositional constructs
Pre- to postelection shifts in presidential rhetoric
Revolutionary leaders
College sophomores in the laboratory
What is a trait of personality
The critical incident technique
| Unique citing works | 32 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,45 |
| Citation span | 2004 - 2025 (22) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 30 |