The Psychological Assessment of Political LeadersCarter and Reagan ComparedIn 1986 another verbal analysis of political leaders was published.
Using randomly chosen samples of their presidential news confer-
ences, I compared the spontaneous speaking styles of Jimmy Carter
and Ronald Reagan. Significant differences between the two presi-
dents' verbal behavior emerged. Carter's use of the verbal categories
showed him to be shy, aloof, competitive, and defensive when chal-
lenged. In contrast, Reagan was engaging, generous, confident,
entertaining, and superficially personal with the White House press.
Under pressure, Reagan showed a tendency to deny unpleasant
aspects of reality and, in certain instances, to reverse previously made
decisions (Weintraub 1986).
Why Analyze Political Leaders?
At this point, readers may wonder what can be learned from the ver-
bal analysis of political leaders that cannot be ascertained by direct
observation. Precisely because readers are already familiar with the
personality traits of political leaders, verbal analyses can be compared
with what is already known about them. Readers can then determine
for themselves if the speech patterns generated by the method reflect
the public behavior of public leaders. Since grammatical choices are
not consciously made, there is always the possibility that informa-
tion about a political figure's personality not known to the public
may be unearthed by verbal behavior analysis.
There is still another reason for studying the speech habits of
political leaders. Our method of verbal behavior analysis may be use-
ful to investigators of important individuals who are no longer alive.
Historians and biographers studying individuals of past eras often
must rely on written documents, such as speeches, memoirs, letters,
transcribed conversations, and so forth. These scholars tend to focus
primarily on thematic content to the virtual neglect of formal
aspects of language. Character analysis based entirely upon anecdotal
data tends to be impressionistic and fraught with error. Any method
that can compare, in a reasonably systematic way, behavior and styles
of speaking may be useful to historians and biographers.