The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaderstic structures, being independent of meaning, can be easily recog-
nized and scored (Chomsky 1957, 17). A speaker's choice of gram-
matical forms is subject to little conscious manipulation.
We assume that styles of speaking reflect characteristic nonverbal
behavior. But how do we go about identifying grammatical struc-
tures that are associated with personality traits? Two examples will
help demonstrate the method.
The first illustration concerns a man with problems of impulse
control. He acts without considering the consequences of his behav-
ior. As a result, he often finds himself regretting his actions and try-
ing to undo their harmful consequences. How might this impulsive
trait be reflected in our subject's speech? We would expect him to
blurt out ill-considered remarks and then attempt to take them back
or qualify them in some way. How would this tendency be mirrored
in his grammatical choices? We would expect our subject to make
frequent use of adversative expressions, such as but, nevertheless, and
however. A number of years ago, a colleague, Dr. H. Aronson, and I
published a report showing that a group of hospitalized, impulse-
ridden psychiatric patients did use significantly more adversative
expressions than a group of normal control subjects (Weintraub and
Aronson 1964). Similar results were later obtained from a group of
binge eaters, individuals who impulsively consume large quantities
of food and then try to undo the consequences of their overeating
(Weintraub and Aronson 1969).
Let us take as our second example an individual with compulsive,
ritualistic behavior. Such a person feels compelled to perform repet-
itive, apparently senseless acts, such as washing his hands over and
over again or checking repeatedly to see if his door is locked before
retiring for the night. If our subject attempts to resist his compul-
sion, he becomes anxious and cannot long maintain his resolve. Since
compulsive patients are logical to a fault, they must provide them-
selves and others with reasons to justify their repetitive acts. We
would, therefore, expect their speech to contain numerous explana-
tory expressions, such as because, therefore, and in order to. A study Dr.
Aronson and I published confirmed this expectation. A group of
compulsive psychiatric patients did, in fact, use significantly more
explanatory expressions than a normal control group (Weintraub and
Aronson 1974). Similar results were obtained with a group of delu-