New directions for leader personality research: breaking bad in foreign policy

Abstract

This article considers how leaders' personality traits change over time. I focus on how leaders become more authoritarian, overconfident and more mistake-prone; how, when and why do leaders ‘break bad’? Temporal evolution of leaders is an important topic given the long tenure of many political leaders and the influence these leaders have over policies, including foreign policies. There is very little work on how leaders' personalities develop and how they interact with changing constraints and opportunities. This article is an agenda-setting review, designed to push foreign policy analysis in new directions. This is especially important given the resurgence in research on personalities and the renewed interest in leaders. Drawing on diverse and multi-disciplinary scholarship on the psychological effects of aging, experience, learning and power-holding, this article develops expectations about leader personality change. I discuss challenges for research in this area, focusing on how ‘bad’ can be conceptualized, and offer specific avenues for future investigations.

Understanding Donald Trumps inconsistent foreign policy through psychological assessments: the case of North Korea

“…Scoring high or low on each trait indicates certain trends towards decision-making behavior. These trends are drawn both from theoretical assumptions and from the accumulative literature on personality traits, since many academic works have compared the leadership traits and political behaviors of different leaders throughout the last decades (Kaarbo, 1997;Kaarbo;Hermann, 1998;Dyson, 2006;Görener;Ucal, 2011;Keller;Foster, 2012;Van Esch;Swinkels, 2015;Çuhudar et al, 2020;Fitzsimmons, 2020). Combined, the trait scores allow us to understand an individual's leadership style, which accounts for the leader's personality through the answer of Hermann's (2003) three guiding questions: is the leader open or closed to information?…”

“…Leaders who are open to information usually look for contextual cues in the environment, analyzing the political context in order to know what is feasible, which leads to more pragmatic decision-making behavior. These leaders tend to look for expert opinion before making decisions and to observe what other important political leaders are doing to deal with the issue at stake (Kaarbo;Hermann, 1998;Hermann, 2003). Drawing on these assumptions, we would expect Trump's decision-making behavior in foreign policy to be pragmatic, looking for cues in the environment and asking for expert advice before making decisions.…”