Personality, Character, and Leadership in the White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents

by Steven J. Rubenzer

Personality, Character, and Leadership in the White House is the first book-length work to present scientific personality evaluations of the American presidents. This benchmark work dramatically improves the state-of-the-art in classifying presidents and predicting performance in the White House. Dr. Steven Rubenzer and Dr. Thomas Faschingbauer asked 120 experts, including biographers, historians, presidential advisers, and other knowledge-able sources, to rate the presidents by filling out standardized personality tests. For each president that fell within their area of expertise, the evaluators completed a 592-item questionnaire regarding personality, intelligence, and behavior. From the results, the authors identify nine traits related to presidential success, examine how the presidents’ personalities affected their job performance, and list their scores on the major dimensions of personality. Rubenzer and Faschingbauer provide revealing insights about every American president and profile twenty-one of them in detail, including all post–World War II presidents and all of the "great" presidents. In addition to revolutionizing the way we look at the presidency, the study offers entertaining and unexpected conclusions. For instance, which recent president’s personality and character most closely resembles those of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln? The answer may surprise you. Presidential scholars, students, and anyone who likes to be well informed when discussing their political preferences will find this enlightening book irresistible.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Psychology

385 pages, Hardcover

First published August 3, 2004

Reviews

[Nicholas Sangiacomo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was a really interesting introduction in getting to know many different Presidents of the US, a topic I was not familiar with before reading this. Two Presidents who interest me greatly after this are Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson. Throughout this book there are a lot of really interesting and psychologically suggestive tidbits that intrigued me and brought me through the book very eagerly.

But this book suffers, in my opinion, from being at once too generalist and too reductive. The book starts slow as the authors (in my opinion) sort of labor over their method, which I found far too complex for my tastes. It was nice to see the charts of the NEO results layered on top of one another for comparison's sake, for instance. And yet reading this I couldn't help but shake my head over the ridiculousness on trying to give a 5ish page biography/overview of the life of a President and then boiling down their personality type to a five point chart.

In total fairness, they do attempt to address these concerns, and in any case, when picking up this book you probably are aware of what you're getting into: ie. one methodology for trying to better understand often very elusive characters. It's imprecise work by nature and so it's maybe unfair to take stars off the book because of that.

Yet as a reading experience, this book just left me wanting so much more. 8 pages on Abraham Lincoln just don't seem like enough to me, especially when the last portion of that chapter covers of all people President Harding. This is one instance where their methodology and structuring of the book (ie. dedicating a chapter to a specific President archetype) succeeds in theory but sort of fails in practice.

If you want to learn a little more about a lot of different presidents (man oh man do they need to update this to include Obama and Trump!), this is a wonderful place to start because it will definitely pique your interest. But if you are a little more familiar already, or are looking for something more in-depth, this might not be the book for you. 3/5, worth reading but not necessary

[Gordon Kwok · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in Presidential history or just interested in the psychology of the men (no women yet) who held the highest office in the land.

[Son Tung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this paperback book in library of University of Helsinki (a ideal place with so many academic books on social sciences). Quite an awesome time sitting there contemplating lives of many US presidents, events in history, in a meditative atmosphere and with exaggeration, state of the art facility. I can not imagine this book in the form of audiobook since there are a lot to be seen with the eyes.

There are two great things i witness from this book:

- The critical attitude of two researchers (authors) when using quantitative tools to examine something hard to measure, i.e personlity. A large chunk of it is dedicated to explain how they use the survey, tools and possible biases when examine hearsay, historical account, professional biographers... I have numerous occasions for fun thought experiement with NEO Facets measures of personality.

- The brief biographies of over 20 US presidents, thier visions, deeds and aftermath. A general read makes it a good introduction. The book divides (not all) presidents into 8 categories, a president can be in several category. There are section for exceptional presidents who do not fit any in particular category.
(1) Dominators: Nixon, Johnson - Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Johson, Polk, Arthur;
(2) Introverts: John Adams and his son J.Quincy Adams - Nixon, Hoover, Coolidge, Wilson;
(3) The good guys: Hayes, Eisenhower, Ford, Washington, Cleveland
(4) The innocents: Harding, Grant, Taft
(5) The Actors: Reagan, Harding, Clinton, Pierce
(6) Maintainers: Mckinley, G.H.W Bush, Ford, Truman
(7) The philosophes: Garfield, Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison, Carter, Hayes
(8) The Extraverts: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Rooseveltand , Kennedy, Clinton, Reagan, Harding, Lyndon B. Johnson

There are Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy in the list of outliers. Very interesting to know which trait makes good presidents, which is nessecary for politics and how diverse is the personality pool of presidents.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned that many of the best presidents have not rated high on the "straight forward" characteristic. All and all an interesting assessment of different leadership styles and how they fit (or don't fit) with different times - an interesting read during the election season.