Assessing the U.S. Presidents Using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory

“…Thus, it is very likely that the three measures, despite their distinct origins, are all tapping into the same underlying construct-each president's broad intellectual breadth, power, and energy. 1 As further support for this conjecture, the Openness scores also predict the performance ratings that the presidents receive from historians and political scientists who have expertise in the American presidency (Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, & Ones, 2000). In fact, not only does Openness predict presidential success better than any other Big Five factor, but it correlates with "ethics on the job" as well (Ones, Rubenzer, & Faschingbauer, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives

Simonton

2006

Political Psychology

124

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individual differences in intelligence are consistently associated with leader performance, including the assessed performance of presidents of the United States. Given this empirical significance, IQ scores were estimated for all 42 chief executives from George Washington to G. W. Bush. The scores were obtained by applying missing-values estimation methods (expectation-maximization) to published assessments of (a) IQ (Cox, 1926; n = 8), (b) Intellectual Brilliance (Simonton, 1986c; n = 39), and (c) Openness to Experience n = 32). The resulting scores were then shown to correlate with evaluations of presidential leadership performance. The implications for George W. Bush and his presidency were then discussed.

show abstract

“…Inspired by the pioneering research of Simonton (1986Simonton ( , 1987 on presidential personality, Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, and Ones (2000) found that some personality traits, most notably high levels of openness to experience (see also Simonton, 2006), extraversion, conscientiousness, and perhaps low levels of agreeableness, are modestiy correlated witii independentiy rated job performance among the U.S. presidents. Nevertheless, no study has examined the relation of psychopathic personality traits to leadership and job performance among the U.S. presidents.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership.

Lilienfeld

Waldman

Landfield

et al. 2012

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Self Cite

251

185

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although psychopathic personality (psychopathy) is marked largely by maladaptive traits (e.g., poor impulse control, lack of guilt), some authors have conjectured that some features of this condition (e.g., fearlessness, interpersonal dominance) are adaptive in certain occupations, including leadership positions. We tested this hypothesis in the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush using (a) psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential leadership, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Fearless Dominance, which reflects the boldness associated with psychopathy, was associated with better rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations, and allied variables; it was also associated with several largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance, such as initiating new projects and being viewed as a world figure. Most of these associations survived statistical control for covariates, including intellectual brilliance, five factor model personality traits, and need for power. In contrast, Impulsive Antisociality and related traits of psychopathy were generally unassociated with rated presidential performance, although they were linked to some largely or entirely objective indicators of negative job performance, including Congressional impeachment resolutions, tolerating unethical behavior in subordinates, and negative character. These findings indicate that the boldness associated with psychopathy is an important but heretofore neglected predictor of presidential performance, and suggest that certain features of psychopathy are tied to successful interpersonal behavior.

show abstract

Assessing the U.S. Presidents Using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory

Cited by 176 publications

References 28 publications

Quantifying leader lives: What historiometric approaches can tell us

Quantifying leader lives: What historiometric approaches can tell us

Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives

Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About