Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis

The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders

remarks and provides an element of disarming entertainment to his
verbal style.
To sum up, Saddam Hussein's use of verbal categories includes
high scores in the following categories: explainers, adverbial
intensifies, direct references, and nonpersonal references. His scores
in the following categories are low: the personal pronouns I, we, and
me; qualifiers; expressions of feeling; and creative expressions. As
measured by this system of verbal behavior analysis, Saddam Hussein
emerges as a cold, impersonal, intrusive speaker. An autocratic ruler
possessing such speaking habits would be perceived by his people to
be dangerous and menacing—a bully.
To some extent Hussein preserves some of the speaking habits of
an Eastern leader whose official position depends upon control of the
ruling political party. This is particularly true of his sparse use of
personal pronouns. Hussein's use of qualifiers and retractors suggests
an ability to make decisions and to reconsider them when appropri-
ate. A low frequency of occurrence of qualifiers indicates a control-
ling speaker, one who is not comfortable in a setting where surprises
may occur. The Iraqi leader shows a rationalizing tendency by his
frequent use of explainers. A low me score suggests an active leader-
ship style. With respect to verbal creativity, as reflected in the use of
wit, metaphors, and unusual juxtaposition of words, Hussein shows
little evidence of the capacity to think and act in an original or inno-
vative style.

Motivations and Mediation of Self-Other Relationships

David G. Winter

For assessing Saddam Hussein, there is very little verbal material

available. What is available has probably been selected, edited, and

otherwise controlled to an unknown but considerable extent. The

researcher's problem is thus to find any usable material at all. Some

speeches are available in books (e.g., Bengio 1992; Hussein 1981;

Matar 1981) or in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily

Report, but for assessing the motives of most world leaders, prepared

speeches are not very useful because they are given on specific occa-

sions to specific audiences, such that it is difficult to find much com-

parable material from other world leaders.^1

However, most world leaders do give interviews and news confer-