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The Political Personality of 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton

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The Political Personality of 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU Psychology Faculty Publications Psychology 10-2016 The Political Personality of 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton Aubrey Immelman St. John's University / College of St. Benedict, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/psychology_pubs Part of the American Politics Commons, Leadership Studies Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Other Psychology Commons, and the Personality and Social Contexts Commons Recommended Citation Immelman, A. (2016, October). The political personality of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (Working Paper No. 1.2). Collegeville and St. Joseph, MN: St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics. Retrieved from Digital Commons website: http://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/psychology_pubs/102/ (doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23477.27365) Copyright © 2016 by Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics / Aubrey Immelman THE POLITICAL PERSONALITY OF 2016 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE HILLARY CLINTON Aubrey Immelman Department of Psychology Saint John’s University College of Saint Benedict St. Joseph, MN 56374 Telephone: (320) 363-5481 E-mail: [email protected] Working Paper — Release 1.2 Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics http://personality-politics.org/ October 2016 Acknowledgment. Jennifer Jo Hagel assisted with data collection for Study 1 (1998); Aví A. T. Bahadoor for Study 2 (1999–2000); Elizabeth Malaktaris for Study 3 (2004); Julie Seifert, Sarah Moore, Kristin Blomme, Peter Mullin, and Will Purdy II for Study 4 (2007–2008); and Joe Trenzeluk and Rylee Pool for Study 5 (2015–2016). Abstract The Political Personality of 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton Aubrey Immelman Saint John’s University College of Saint Benedict St. Joseph, MN 56374, U.S.A. Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics http://personality-politics.org/ This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democratic nominee in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The present report combines data from five studies conducted between 1998 and 2016 from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon. Psychodiagnostically relevant data about Clinton was collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM–IV. The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles manuals. Clinton’s predominant personality patterns were found to be Ambitious/self-serving (a measure of narcissism) and Dominant/controlling, infused with secondary features of the Conscientious/dutiful and Retiring/reserved patterns and some indication of Distrusting/suspicious features. In summary, Clinton’s personality composite can be labeled elitist narcissism, or, in political terms, as the profile of a deliberative high-dominance introvert — deliberative by virtue of her substantial conscientiousness. Ambitious individuals are bold, competitive, and self-assured; they easily assume leadership roles, expect others to recognize their special qualities, and often act as though entitled. Dominant individuals enjoy the power to direct others and to evoke obedience and respect; they are tough and unsentimental and often make effective leaders. Conscientious leaders are dutiful and diligent, with a strong work ethic and careful attention to detail, and often excel in crafting public policy. On the downside, conscientious leaders often lack the retail political skills required to consummate their policy objectives. In short, they are more technocratic than visionary. Retiring (introverted) individuals tend not to develop strong ties to others, are somewhat deficient in the ability to recognize the needs or feelings of others, and may lack spontaneity and vitality. In American politics, introverted leaders face serious challenges in attaining high-level public office because of their difficulty in connecting emotionally with voters and the media. Clinton’s major personality strengths in a political role are her confident assertiveness and commanding demeanor. Her major personality-based shortcomings are uncompromising assertiveness, a lack of empathy and congeniality, and cognitive inflexibility. The major implication of the study is that it offers an empirically based personological framework for identifying Clinton’s major personal strengths and limitations as a candidate and anticipating her likely leadership style as president. Political Personality of Hillary Clinton 1 Introduction “Can you be a misanthrope and still love and enjoy some individuals? How about a compassionate misanthrope?” That enigmatic thought, expressed in the spring of 1967 by Wellesley sophomore Hillary Rodham in a letter to a friend (cited by Sheehy, 1999, p. 53), provides a valuable clue to the character of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Popular psychobiographies such as Gail Sheehy’s Hillary’s Choice (1999) offer a smattering of legitimate psychological insights into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political ambitions and leadership potential — for example, her externalization of blame, her combativeness and tendency to crucify opponents, her toughness and lack of empathy, and her persistence in the face of adversity. However, a major difficulty with biographies in this genre is that personality insights are not grounded in a coherent, integrated theory of personality. Systematic analysis of the relationship between personality variables and political behaviors requires a dual theory of personality and politics. That conceptual problem provides the context for the present study, whose object was to conduct a systematic, theoretically grounded empirical assessment of the personality of Hillary Clinton and to examine its political implications. The study combines data from five separate studies conducted between 1998 and 2016 against the backdrop of her election campaigns for U.S. Senate in the state of New York in 2000 and for president in 2008 and 2016. Conceptually, the study is informed by Theodore Millon’s (1969, 1986a, 1986b, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996, 2003; Millon & Davis, 2000; Millon & Everly, 1985) model of personality as adapted (Immelman, 1993, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005) for the study of personality in politics. I employ the terms personality and politics in Fred Greenstein’s (1992) narrowly construed sense. Politics, by this definition, “refers to the politics most often studied by political scientists — that of civil government and of the extra-governmental processes that more or less directly impinge upon government, such as political parties” and campaigns. Personality, as narrowly construed in political psychology, “excludes political attitudes and opinions … and applies only to nonpolitical personal differences” (p. 107). Personality may be concisely defined as: a complex pattern of deeply embedded psychological characteristics that are largely nonconscious and not easily altered, expressing themselves automatically in almost every facet of functioning. Intrinsic and pervasive, these traits emerge from a complicated matrix of biological dispositions and experiential learnings, and ultimately comprise the individual’s distinctive pattern of perceiving, feeling, thinking, coping, and behaving. (Millon, 1996, p. 4) Greenstein (1992) makes a compelling case for studying personality in government and politics: “Political institutions and processes operate through human agency. It would be remarkable if they were not influenced by the properties that distinguish one individual from another” (p. 124). Political Personality of Hillary Clinton 2 The methodology employed in this study involves the construction of a theoretically grounded personality profile derived from empirical analysis of biographical source materials (see Immelman, 2003, 2005, 2014). A comprehensive review of Millon’s personological model and its applicability to political personality has been provided elsewhere (e.g., Immelman, 1993, 2003, 2005). Briefly, Millon’s model encompasses eight attribute domains: expressive behavior, interpersonal conduct, cognitive style, mood/temperament, self-image, regulatory mechanisms, object representations, and morphologic organization (see Table 1). Table 1 Millon’s Eight Attribute Domains Attribute Description Expressive behavior The individual’s characteristic behavior; how the individual typically appears to others; what the individual knowingly or unknowingly reveals about him- or herself; what the individual wishes others to think or to know about him or her. Interpersonal conduct How the individual typically interacts with others; the attitudes that underlie, prompt, and give shape to these actions; the methods by which the individual engages others to meet his or her needs; how the individual copes with social tensions and conflicts. Cognitive style How the individual focuses and allocates attention, encodes and processes information, organizes thoughts, makes attributions, and communicates reactions and ideas to others. Mood/temperament How the individual typically displays emotion; the predominant character of an individual’s affect and the intensity and frequency with which he or she expresses
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