PHILOSOPHY IN ARMS:

How Psychologists Rate Presidents (Steve Rubenzer, Deniz Ones, and Tom Faschingbauer, 2/21/05, History News Network)

Because we used a standardized test that has been administered to a large number of typical Americans, we were able for the first time to compare the personalities of presidents to the people they represent. Presidents, as a group, have been more Assertive, Achievement-Striving, traditional in values, and less Straightforward than average Americans. In other words, they have been dominant, ambitious, conservative, but somewhat devious men. We found that current presidents tend to be very extraverted (about 90th percentile), while early presidents tended to be more introverted than most present-day Americans. The Founders also were more philosophical (consider Adams, Jefferson and Madison vs. LBJ, Reagan, and the Bushes) and rated higher on some measures of character than the current office holders. Recent Democrats and Republicans (up through G. H. W. Bush) differ in terms of personality as well as policy: Democrats (FDR through Clinton) were rated as ambitious, energetic, devious, undependable, and tenderhearted by their biographers, whereas Republicans were generally considered very conservative in values, unsympathetic toward the disadvantaged, and uninterested in philosophy or intellectual play. Other than Nixon, however, they scored much higher than Democrats on indices of character.

We also explored whether there are discernable presidential personality types by examining how similar the presidents’ personalities are to each other, using experts’ ratings on all 592 items of our questionnaire. We found eight types of presidents: Dominators (LBJ, Nixon, A. Johnson, Jackson, Polk, T. Roosevelt, and Arthur), Introverts (J. Adams, J. Q. Adams, Nixon, Hoover, Coolidge, Buchanan, Wilson, and B. Harrison), Good Guys (Hayes, Taylor, Eisenhower, Tyler, Fillmore, Cleveland, Ford, and Washington), Innocents (Taft, Harding, and Grant), Actors (Reagan, Harding, Harrison, Clinton, and Pierce), Maintainers (McKinley, G.H.W. Bush, Ford, and Truman), Philosophes (Garfield, Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison, Carter, and Hayes), and Extraverts (FDR, Kennedy, Clinton, T. Roosevelt, Reagan, W. Harrison, Harding, Jackson, and LBJ). Although our major purpose was to identify types of presidents based on personality, it turns out that some types tend to make better presidents than others: Philosophes and Extraverts tend to perform better than average, while Introverts and especially Innocents perform below average. [...]

We produced similar profiles for all of the prominent past presidents, and preliminary ones for G .W. Bush and John Kerry. Bush is interesting because he scores well below the average president on many of our presidential success factors, with low scores on Competence (keeps well-informed, makes good decisions), Achievement Striving (works hard to meet goals), and Tender Mindedness. He scored highly only on Positive Emotions (enthusiasm and humor), but also most resembled two successful presidents. Bush’s similarity to Reagan (much more than to his own father) has been noted. However, we found Bush to most resemble another charismatic, combative, incurious extravert -- Andrew Jackson.

The secret to the success of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is that they are not only obvious Jacksonians but unrecognized Philosophes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 21, 2005 8:11 AM