Assessing Leaders' PersonalitiesTraits and TemperamentThe domain of traits refers to the public, visible, stylistic (or adver-
bial) aspects of personality.^6 In recent years, personality psycholo-
gists have reached some consensus on the importance of five trait fac-
tors or dimensions: extraversion (or surgency), agreeableness,
conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience
(see John and Srivastava 1999). Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, and Ones
(2000) measured these five trait dimensions among all forty-one U.S.
presidents from Washington through Clinton by asking 115 authors
of presidential biographies (both historians and public figures) to fill
out three different standard instruments (a questionnaire, an adjec-
tive checklist, and a Q-sort). They discussed the trait profiles of
Washington and Lincoln and reported moderate correlations, among
all presidents, between the "openness to experience" dimension and
ratings of presidential performance.
Simonton (1986, 1988) also measured a variety of trait factors of
U.S. presidents, in this case by asking student raters, who had read
brief personality descriptions excerpted from presidential biogra-
phies (with identifying information removed), to fill out adjective
checklists or lists of trait phrases.
Several researchers have studied particular traits of various groups
of political leaders. Etheredge (1978) used questionnaires and stan-
dard personality tests to measure traits directly in a study of over two
hundred male United States foreign service officers, military officers,
and domestic affairs specialists. He found that men who scored high
on the traits of dominance and competitiveness were (when the research
was carried out, in 1971-72) more likely to view Soviet foreign pol-
icy as "active," "powerful," and "menacing." Consistent with these
perceptions, they were also more likely to advocate the use of force
across a series of different scenarios involving hypothetical interna-
tional unrest or Soviet "expansion." In contrast, men who scored
high on interpersonal trust and self-esteem (variables that also involve
cognitive beliefs) were against the use of force.
Etheredge then confirmed these results with an at-a-distance
study of twentieth-century American presidents and foreign policy
advisers. Traits were rated by judges who read excerpts of standard