Assessing Leaders' Personalities1991; see also Hermann 1979, 198oa, 198ob, which use only the
affiliation and power measures). These motive imagery scores are
usually unrelated to people's conscious beliefs or statements about
their goals (see Weinberger and McClelland 1990). Among politi-
cians, moreover, motive imagery scores are usually unrelated to pol-
icy statements: in other words, it is possible to speak or write for or
against any particular political goal or program, with or without
using achievement, affiliation, and/or power imagery.
Political leaders studied with this technique include U.S. presi-
dents and Supreme Court justices; leaders from several countries and
factions in sub-Saharan and southern Africa during the mid-1970s;
general secretaries of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, as
well as members of the Politburo of the Party's Central Committee;
and various groups of significant world leaders. Systematic and
objective motive imagery content analysis has also been used as part
of the psychobiographical study of individual leaders, ranging from
U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon to former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former Italian leader Benito
Mussolini.
Psychoanalytic Measures
Using a quite different theoretical and methodological approach,
Luck (1974) developed a priori objective measures of certain basic
psychoanalytic motivational concepts (such as orality and anal-
sadism) and carried out a comparative study of Hitler, Stalin, Mao
Zedong, and Liu Shao-ch'i (Liu Shaoqi).Cognitions and Cognitive Style
Specific Cognitive Beliefs
Hermann (198oa, 1984) developed at-a-distance measures of several
specific beliefs and interpersonal style variables that have been exten-
sively studied in personality research. Nationalism (or ethnocentrism)
as a cognitive belief and distrust as an aspect of interpersonal style
are two aspects of a broader authoritarianism (see Brown 1965, chap.
10; Winter 1996, chap. 7). Among heads of state, these two vari-
ables are associated with expressions of strong, negative affect toward
other nations and with low levels of resource commitment in foreign