Political Leaders at a Distance

The personalities of political leaders often play an important role in domestic and international outcomes. However, leaders cannot be studied directly by the usual means of interviews or psychological tests. In consequence, psychologists have developed a variety of indirect methods to assess and measure personality "at a distance." Many of these at-a-distance measures are based on content analysis of what leaders say or write. Political Leaders at a Distance begins by describing several cases when leaders' personality played critical roles in important political outcomes, such as the outbreak of war in 1914. The book then reviews the history of at-a-distance studies and offers a conceptual framework for personality, consisting of four different elements: social contexts, traits, cognitions, and motives. Subsequent chapters focus on the personality variables of each element: their theoretical bases, the validity credentials of existing at-a-distance measures, and additional measurement techniques that might be developed in the future. Each variable is discussed with case examples of particular leaders and historical figures, research results from previous at-a-distance studies of leaders, and links to instructions, procedures, and scoring systems for measuring that variable. The final chapter brings together theory and at-a-distance research from the four separate elements of personality, revisiting examples throughout the book to offer a complete assessment. The book concludes with a discussion of future directions for at-a-distance personality measurement and research such as exploring the personality characteristics of literary figures, and the work of artists and architects.

David G. Winter is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. He is a personality and social psychologist with special interests in political psychology, psychological aspects of war and peace, and methods of assessing the personalities of leaders "at a distance," without direct contact or access. He is the author of Roots of War: Wanting Power, Seeing Threat, Justifying Force (2017) and Personality: Analysis and Interpretation of Lives (1996) as well as numerous journal articles.