Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis

Assessing Leaders' Personalities

of this work to two leaders from strikingly different political set-
tings, William Jefferson Clinton and Saddam Hussein.

Notes

This chapter draws significantly on Winter 199212. The reviews of literatures are
intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive.

1. Even journalists sometimes feel the need for assistance from psychology (at
   least retrospectively). For example, in reviewing two biographies of Mao 2'e-
   dong, Burns (2000) confessed that "For myself, I wish now that in covering
   China, South Africa under apartheid, the Soviet Union and wars in Afghanistan
   and the former Yugoslavia, among other places—scars, all, on the conscience of
   the 2Oth century—I had made fuller allowance for, or understood better, the role
   of wounded psyches in producing the Maos, Stalins, Vorsters, Najibullahs,
   Karadzics and Arkans I wrote about along the way" (7).


2. While Lasswell's formulation is a popular and widely cited interpretation
   of power strivings, there are alternative interpretations that emphasize the role of
   direct early reinforcement of power behaviors rather than perceived weakness or
   inferiority (see Winter 1999).


3. Most psychoanalysts are embarrassed by the crudeness and hostility of the
   Freud and Bullitt interpretation (see, e.g., Erikson 1967); many have questioned
   whether Freud actually contributed much to the interpretation or writing. In his
   preface, Bullitt wrote that he and Freud worked on the book for over ten years,
   finally completing a manuscript in 1932, but with subsequent revisions in 1938.
   According to Freud's biographer, Ernest Jones, who read the book in manu-
   script, the book was written in 1930—31 and "although a joint work it is not
   hard to distinguish the analytical contributions of the one author [Freud] from
   the political contributions of the other [Bullitt}" (1953-57, 3:160, see also
   3:i73)-


4. Some researchers have been able to administer tests and questionnaires to
   leaders as high as the level of members of state legislatures (Altemeyer 1996) or
   members of national parliaments (DiRenzo 1967), although of course they did
   not report the scores of named individuals. One major exception to this general-
   ization are the psychological tests given to Nazi leaders at Niirnberg (see Zillrner
   et al. 1995), but of course they were prisoners at the time.


5. Of course, most documents and speeches that bear the name of a major
   political leader are actually written by one or more speechwriters, and even
   "spontaneous" press conference responses to questions and "informal" comments
   may be highly scripted. Thus one may ask whether a content analysis of such
   materials produces personality estimates of the leader or of the speech writers.
   Suedfeld (1994) and Winter (1995) discuss this issue and conclude that because
   leaders select speech writers and review their drafts, and speech writers "know"
   their clients, personality scores based on content analysis (at least of major