Toward Understanding President Obama's Motives

When President Obama delivered his inaugural address earlier this year, it came under the scrutiny of psychologists interested in better understanding the new president's personality and psychological aspects of his leadership.

Psychologists interested in matters such as presidential personality draw on personality psychology as well as the related disciplines of political psychology, psychobiography, and psychohistory.

Personality psychology concerns such issues as how motives direct an individual. More technically, it tries to understand how a person's overall psychological functions are organized and expressed in the environment.

Psychohistory concerns the psychological processes that contribute to human history. David Beisel, a professor at SUNY-Rockland, puts it like this:

"...a sensible rendering might be simply 'the psychology of people in history.' Psychohistory weds psychology and history: It is the 'Why?' of history, the study of historical motivation. More formally, it is the systematic application of the findings and methods of the science of psychology to help explain individual and group behavior, past and present. Since we deal not just with the distant, but also the recent past (what historians call contemporary history), we look at present politics as well and draw upon the findings of political psychology."

Professor David Winter, of the University of Michigan, has recently completed an important analysis of President Obama's personality, focusing specifically on his motives.

This post provides some general background on Dr. Winter's (and others') work on presidential personality.

A second post, next Monday, will describe Dr. Winter's specific findings concerning President Obama's profile of motives.

Any president's success will depend on a number of facets of personality including such qualities as intellectual capacity, openness, and charisma.

Consider a hypothetical person who is "average" in all his or her personality characteristics. Such an individual would certainly fail as president to some degree.

"Average" is unlikely to want to lead, or to communicate forcefully, or to guide in a strong positive fashion. What do we need to change in "average" to get a successful president?

Successful presidents need to perform a broad variety of tasks well. To be perceived as successful leaders, presidents must communicate forcefully, elicit loyalty from the nation, treat others justly, guide in a strong, active and positive fashion, and clarify the country's identity.

In the mid-20th century, one group of psychological researchers believed that some determinants of effective leadership could be found in the president's motivational profile. These psychologists studied three motives in particular: the motives for achievement, affiliation, and power.

The achievement motive concerns striving to meet criteria of excellence. The affiliation motive concerns being liked and having contact with others. The power motive concerns a need to exert control over others.

Winter has developed some special methods to study motives at a distance (crucial for psychohistorical work). People perceive the world in part according to their own motives: what they want to accomplish. Winter's procedure is based on the general finding that people express their mental concerns and understandings of the world in what they talk about and communicate.

In Winter's assessment system, a researcher identifies a document such as a transcript of the president's inaugural address.

Using a series of rules for coding communication, Winter (and others) can code a given document for the presence of a given set of motives.

The rules for identifying high power motive, for example, include searches for images, story-interactions, and other expressions that reflect needs for influence and control. A high-power individual is more likely than others to announce strong forceful actions in a speech (e.g., "Unless air traffic controllers return to work, they will be fired"), or might provide unsolicited advice (e.g., "I'd like to advise my opponents on what to do here..."), or might try to control others by regulating their lives, or convince others people of a point, or impress others on the world stage. Rules are set up so that each time such content arises, it is coded as indicating power.

Personality Essential Reads

Why Do Antagonistic People Think They’re So Perfect?

Do Only Jerks Eat Meat?

Using such procedures, Winter has analyzed the motives of all presidents of the United States. Each motive plays out in presidential life differently. Achievement-motivated presidents are energetic, but often find the job unrewarding. They are idealistic, but sooner or later they will be forced to compromise those ideals -- and they don't like doing so.

For example, in Winter's view, President Nixon was a high-achievement president, highly frustrated by the job. His frustrations propelled him to take ever-greater political risks so as to get his way. His risk-taking, coupled with his crude, shadowy use of power (perhaps in contrast to the more skilled behavior of a high-power-need person) created a toxic combination that led to the Watergate scandal.

Professor Winter has recently completed a first assessment of President Obama's personality based (in part) on the President's inaugural address. I will post on Dr. Winter's specific findings regarding President Obama next Monday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes: The extended quote defining psychohistory is from the 5th paragraph of: Beisel, D. (1998). Teaching Psychohistory. The Journal of Psychohistory, 25, 391-411.

A few passages in this post are re-worked from an earlier post on presidential motivation written during the Fall, 2008, presidential election. Much of the material here is based on Winter, David G. (2005). Things I've learned about personality from studying political leaders at a distance. Journal of Personality, 73, 557-584. The quotes, "Achievement-oriented political leaders..." and "Power-motivated presidents..." are both from pp. 561-562 of that article.

Specific examples of power imagery are drawn from Winter, D. G. (1992) A revised scoring system for the power motive. In Smith, C. P. (Ed.). Motivation and personality, Cambridge University Press, pp. 313-315).

© Copyright 2009 John D. Mayer