Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis

Measuring the Motives of Political Actors at a Distance

Such nuances may be crucial to meaning and action, but they are not
likely to be picked up by the motive imagery scoring systems.
Finally, some things do not even have to be said in so many words;
they operate, in Joll's (1968) term, as "unspoken assumptions." For
all these reasons, the content of the available written record may not
always be isomorphic with the psychological states of political lead-
ers, groups, and peoples, and so we are obliged to use content analy-
sis of that record with caution and humility.

Notes

1. Much of the material in this section is based on Winter 1996 (chap. 5),
   which contains an extensive list of further references.


2. The difference between the achievement and power motives can be
   phrased in terms of the old proverb "Build a better mousetrap and the world will
   beat a path to your door." People high in achievement motivation might indeed
   build the better mousetrap, but power-motivated people would try to get the
   world coming to their door without having to build the better mousetrap first—
   perhaps by buying, renting, or appropriating someone else's mousetrap.


3. Standardization does have the effect of setting the overall standardized
   means and standard deviations of each group that has been standardized equal to
   each other. Thus, while it would be possible to compare the standardized motive
   imagery scores of any two or more presidents with each other, or any president
   with any candidate from a candidate standardization group, the presidents as a
   whole, and the candidates as a whole, will have the same mean and standard devi-
   ation. Thus we cannot determine motive imagery differences between two dif-
   ferent standardization groups as wholes.


4. The assumption that only passages relevant to the crisis should be selected
   can, of course, be debated.


5. Requests for this material can be sent to the following address: David G.
   Winter, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 E. University
   Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109—1109, U.S.A.