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Personality and PoliticsProblems of Evidence, Inference, and Conceptualization
Abstract
It is widely recognized that politics often is profoundly shaped by the personalities of the actors in the political process. Yet the scholarly literature on "personality and politics" is one of the most vexed, controversial, and methodologically gnarled bodies of inquiry in the social sciences. The author of this book, an acknowledged authority in the field, attempts to lay out conceptual and methodological standards for carrying out personality-and-politics inquiries-ranging from psychological case studies of single actors, through multi-case analyses of types of political actors, to aggregative analyses of the impact of individuals and types of individuals on political systems and processes. For the Norton Library edition, Professor Greenstein has written an introduction dealing with current issues and examples.
... Finally, it is possible that there is no significant relationship between arms procurement and the initiation of violence. To wit, variables such as personality (Greenstein, 1987), which may be distributed more or less randomly across states and time, might decisively influence decisions to make threats, go to war, or negotiate. Hence the following hypothesis: H3. ...
We conducted an experimental test of spiraling behavior, sex differences, and uncertainty in a simulated crisis situation. We investigated the relationship between weapons acquisition and the likelihood of engaging in aggressive behavior, such as going to war. The sample included 100 male and female subjects who participated in a crisis simulation in same-sex dyads; each student was instructed to role play the leader of a country in conflict with another leader over a nearby island replete with newly discovered oil resources. Participants were randomly assigned to stimulus materials that manipulated the certainty of the information they received about their partner's force structure. In four cycles of decision-making, each participant made procurement decisions, took an action related to the conflict, including decisions about going to war, completed questionnaires on characteristics such as the hostility and trustworthiness of themselves and their opponents, and wrote messages to the other member of the pair. The results of the study demonstrate a strong relationship between weapons acquisition and hostility. In addition, we found large and robust sex differences, showing that men are much more likely than women to acquire weapons and engage in aggressive behavior at every stage. There was no effect of uncertainty on either arms procurement or aggression.
Der Beginn einer wunderbaren Freundschaft? Nicht ganz! Zumindest aber hätte der Friedensprozess zwischen Nordkorea und den Vereinigten Staaten von dieser skurrilen Beziehung zweier Staatsführer profitieren können.
This chapter discusses the presidential campaign of 2016 and with the unorthodox campaign of Donald Trump, the candidate of the Republican Party for the presidency. Trump used the social media, and Twitter in particular, and other “free media” to gain the attention of Republican voters. It considers some of the deficiencies of the campaigns of other Republicans seeking the nomination, with a focus on Jeb Bush’s campaign. It deals with the importance of personality in politics and then explores the notion that many of Trump’s supporters can be described as “working class authoritarians.” It quotes from a book that argues that it is ironic that in America the elites, not the masses, that are most committed to democratic values. Next, it offers statistics about illiteracy and the low level of education of many Americans and the problem this creates for democracy in America. It concludes with a discussion of the problem Trump faces with a general election, in which he must also appeal to Democrats and Independents to win the presidency.
To develop a general theory of leadership we must locate the function of political leadership in a theory of historical causation. One may begin by identifying sources of leadership in the wants and needs, aspirations and expectations, of humankind. In helping to gratify these “motive-bases,” leaders move followers “up” the hierarchy of needs and other motivations and thus create new social configurations in which leaders act. As persons–especially children-move “up” through stages of morality, they also create structures of values that both empower and constrain would-be leaders. Leadership over human beings is exercised when would-be leaders, possessing certain motives of their own, mobilize their own psychological, institutional, pohtical, and other resources relevant to potential followers' motive bases in such a way as to satisfy the motives of both leaders and followers. The test of leadership is the achievement of goals of both leaders and followers in a context of open conflict over ends and means, with leaders and followers mutually and freely defining their values and purposes.
In Hungary one can mostly find references to the psychological processes of politics in the writings of publicists, public opinion pollsters, philosophers, social psychologists, and political analysts. It would be still important if not only legal scientists focusing on political institutions or sociologist-politologists concentrating on social structures could analyse the psychological aspects of political processes; but one could also do so through the application of the methods of political psychology. The authors review the history of political psychology, its position vis-à-vis other fields of science and the essential interfaces through which this field of science, which is still to be discovered in Hungary, connects to other social sciences. As far as its methodology comprising psycho-biographical analyses, questionnaire-based queries, cognitive mapping of interviews and statements are concerned, it is identical with the psychiatric tools of medical sciences. In the next part of this paper, the focus is shifted to the essence and contents of political psychology. Group dynamics properties, voters' attitudes, leaders' personalities and the behavioural patterns demonstrated by them in different political situations, authoritativeness, games, and charisma are all essential components of political psychology, which mostly analyses psychological-psychiatric processes and also involves medical sciences by relying on cognitive and behavioural sciences. This paper describes political psychology, which is basically part of social sciences, still, being an interdisciplinary science, has several ties to medical sciences through psychological and psychiatric aspects. Orv. Hetil., 2013, 154, 619-626.
While it remains a diffuse field of enquiry, political psychology has established itself as an important approach to the analysis of political life. In the United States, political psychology is offered as an optional programme in a number of leading graduate schools and is a recognized subfield of the American Political Science Association. Despite the existence of a number of active political psychologists in Canada, there has been relatively little curiosity about the status of the field. This article offers an account of research in the field. Central to this exploration is an evaluation of the ideological, cultural and substantive research in political psychology in Canada.
The present study points to some fundamental connections summarizing the international literature on the personality and intellect of politicians and adapting it to local/home conditions.
The objective is to complete Hungarian knowledge/competence as well as defining new pieces of information and connections on the basis of which further examinations and surveys can be executed.
Having collected research material for nearly a year, authors have drawn from several publications, books, dissertations, papers and lectures.
Theory and investigations of some excellent scientists are reviewed in this essay. The 14 political personality dimensions are analysed and classified according to the factors formed by the authors, which correlated with stylistic factors.
In accordance with the authors, sociologists and psychiatrists have drawn the conclusion that the personality of a politician is determinant in politics as well as in the performance of political leaders. Also, personality correlates with attitude and behaviour.
A technique is proposed to isolate the contribution to the probability of occurrence of a dependent attribute of: (1) individual attributes, and (2) group composition in terms of members' attributes. A classification of possible types of relationships which can be identified by the technique is proposed, statistical problems are discussed, and two empirical examples are presented.
Significantly, we have few if any studies of the totalitarian O dictator as a personality type. It may be that we are little closer to a working psychological model of him than Plato took us with his brilliant sketch of the ideal type of the “tyrant” in The Republic. The contemporary literature on totalitarianism does, of course, contain materials that are relevant to the problem of characterization of the totalitarian dictator. Yet no frontal attack appears to have been made upon the problem. The purpose of the present article is to argue the need for one, and to do this in the context of a critical reexamination of the theory of totalitarianism. In the course of it I shall put forward some ideas of possible use in developing a conception of the dictator as a personality type.
Subjects with some religious affiliation are more prejudiced than those without affiliation, but no significant difference between Protestants and Catholics. There is a low but significant negative relation of intelligence and education to ethnocentrism. Interviews threw light on parental relations, childhood, conception of self, and dynamics and organization of personality. Projective techniques are described and results analyzed. 63 interviews are analyzed qualitatively for prejudice, political and economic ideas, religious ideology and syndromes among high and low scorers. The development of two contrasting cases is given. Criminality and antidemocratic trends in prison inmates and a study of clinic patients complete the investigation of the authoritarian personality pattern. 121 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychology "is a science without social content… . I believe that psychology has been and ought to be mainly interested in the properties and processes of individual organisms… . Psychology… has been so far the science which deals with the abstract, universal, culturally contentless features of behavior which in almost all cases—and surely all the most interesting cases—are socially tagged, but which are analyzed as properties of individual organisms… . I am arguing that the formulations which psychologists have made and ought to continue making do not and need not contain explicit social or cultural terms to satisfy the relevance of psychology for understanding social behavior." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2AD32L. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study attempted to determine the effect on Negro Ss of interaction with high and low authoritarian white Ss under varying degrees of forced or voluntary cooperation. Though apparently more prejudiced against low status culture groups, the authoritarian (high F scale) white was more compliant to a biracial situation than nonauthoritarian whites. Among several other findings, the authors conclude: "These results indicate that even when Negroes are given objective evidence of equal mental ability in a relatively brief interracial contact they tend to feel inadequate and to orient compliantly toward whites." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2GD48K.