Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis

The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders

speeches) can be taken as a valid indicator of the personality and psychological
state of the leader—a claim that has generally been validated by research with
such scores.

6. Many psychologists use the term traits much more loosely, and impre-
   cisely, to refer to all personality variables (see Buss 1989)—a practice that is
   regrettable because it confuses fundamentally different kinds of personality char-
   acteristics, such as motives and cognitive representations, with true traits (see
   Winter 1996, chaps, I and II).