(Press-News.org) COLUMBUS, Ohio - The most narcissistic U.S. presidents since 1897 preferred to instigate conflicts with other great power countries without seeking support from allies, a new study suggests.
Results showed that of the presidents measured, those highest in narcissism - including Lyndon B. Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon - were about six times more likely to initiate a dispute with another great power in any given year than a president with average levels of narcissism.
The inclination to "go it alone" in international disputes fits with the desire of those high in narcissism to boost their own reputation and self-image and appear tough and competent to others, said John Harden, author of the study and a doctoral student in political science at The Ohio State University.
"More narcissistic U.S. presidents differed from others in how they approached foreign policy and world politics," Harden said.
"They were more likely to weigh their personal desires more heavily than political survival or the country's interests when it came to how they handled some disputes."
The study was published online recently in the journal International Studies Quarterly.
Harden studied presidents from 1897 - roughly the time the United States became a great power in the world - through George W. Bush in 2009.
In order to measure presidential narcissism, Harden used a dataset from 2000 created by three researchers to assess the personalities of presidents.
These researchers tapped the knowledge of presidential historians and other experts who had written at least one book on a president. Each expert completed a personality inventory with more than 200 questions about the president they studied.
How valid could it be to complete a personality test for another person? It actually works very well, Harden said. Other research has had people complete the same personality inventory used by the historians on behalf of an acquaintance. Results showed that these people answered the personality questions very similarly to the acquaintances themselves.
Using the personality test results for the 19 presidents from 1897 to 2008, Harden analyzed five facets of the test that relate with a common measure of grandiose narcissism: high levels of assertiveness and excitement-seeking and low levels of modesty, compliance and straightforwardness.
Harden determined those five factors are correlated with narcissism in a separate analysis using a general population sample.
"These facets describe people who want to be in charge, seek the spotlight, brag about their accomplishments and are willing to lie and flatter to get what they want. They certainly would be willing to insult others, too," Harden said. "So it is a pretty good description of a narcissist."
Based on these results, Lyndon Johnson was the president who scored highest on narcissism, followed by Teddy Roosevelt and then Richard Nixon.
The president who scored lowest on narcissism was William McKinley, followed by William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge.
"The results are in line with common assessments of the presidents," Harden said.
"Ethically principled McKinley, sensitive and often overwhelmed Taft, and taciturn Coolidge are at the bottom of the list. Meanwhile, self-absorbed and image-conscious figures like Johnson, Roosevelt and Nixon are at the top."
To see how narcissism was related to international conflict, Harden used another dataset, called Militarized Interstate Disputes. This data includes all instances where one country threatened, displayed, or used force against another from 1816 to 2014.
Harden looked specifically at disputes started unilaterally by the United States against other great powers, such as the Soviet Union and China. Any conflicts in which the United States sought support from allies were not counted as a unilaterally initiated great power dispute.
Many of these disputes are not well-known by the public, Harden said, but created a great deal of tension among world leaders.
For example, Nixon initiated Operation Giant Lance in 1969, which sent a squadron of B-52s armed with nuclear weapons to patrol the glacier caps near Moscow. Johnson launched the so-called Lightning Bug War in 1964, sending drones on missions deep inside China.
In his study, Harden took into account and controlled for a wide range of factors other than the narcissism of the president that may have played a role in these conflicts - including, but not limited to, the president's political party, whether the president was in his final term and whether he had military experience, whether the country was war-weary or in a recession, whether the government was unified under one political party and whether the incident occurred during the Cold War.
After taking all of these factors into account, results showed that the probability that the United States would unilaterally initiate at least one great power dispute in any given year was about 4%. For presidents highest in narcissism, the likelihood was around 29%, more than six times higher. For presidents who were at the low end of the narcissism scale, the probability was less than 1%.
"The raw data speaks for itself. The three most narcissistic presidents had unilaterally initiated great power disputes that made up 33% to 71% of all disputes they initiated. Meanwhile, the bottom three had none," Harden said.
There are several reasons why more narcissistic presidents would have a greater likelihood of starting fights with other great power nations without allied support, Harden said.
For one, they would only want to deal with great powers.
"Why would a leader who focuses on their historical notability and image 'waste their time' with lesser status powers?" he said.
They also would work without partners because they don't want to share the spotlight and wouldn't believe that others would have anything to contribute.
Leaders high in narcissism also behave in ways that increase tensions, such as taking actions to project strength. They are willing to accept risks. They also behave dramatically and send unclear signals, Harden said.
While the public and some political scientists may believe that U.S. presidents act with the best interests of the country at heart, Harden said this study provides evidence that some leaders use their office to make themselves feel powerful and important.
"Leaders high in narcissism don't want the same things from their position as others do," Harden said.
"For them, the world truly is a stage."
INFORMATION:
Contact: John Harden, Harden.496@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
Public opinion surveys could be used more widely to understand regional variation in vaccine hesitancy, experts have recommended.
The research shows vaccine uptake rates for childhood vaccines are significantly lower in regions where hesitancy observed in mass public opinion surveys is more pronounced.
This data is often not widely available, which makes it challenging for experts to analyse the links between attitudes and real-world behaviour. The study says this data should be used by public health officials to understand where vaccines are more likely to be rejected, and who should be the target of information campaigns.
The research published in the journal ...
While exploring two exoplanets in a bright nearby star system, ESA's exoplanet-hunting Cheops satellite has unexpectedly spotted the system's third known planet crossing the face of the star. This transit reveals exciting details about a rare planet "with no known equivalent", say the researchers.
The discovery is one of the first results from ESA's Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite), and the first time an exoplanet with a period of over 100 days has been spotted transiting a star that is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.
Named Nu2 Lupi, this bright, ...
PITTSBURGH, June 28, 2021 - It was a nagging mystery: A rare-disease expert at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh had found a successful treatment for two of the deadliest symptoms of one of the more common classes of rare diseases diagnosed by newborn screenings, but one symptom--painful episodes of muscle breakdown that land victims in intensive care--persisted.
Today, the scientists announce in the journal Clinical & Translational Immunology that they've gotten to the bottom of the self-destructive syndrome and have a good lead on a treatment.
"These episodes looked a lot like inflammatory ...
An incredibly rare hybrid warbler with mismatched color patterns has allowed researchers to disentangle the genetic drivers of two traits that usually come as a package deal--the black face mask and the black throat patch in blue-winged and golden-winged warblers. A new study describing the peculiar bird and pinpointing the location in the genome that controls the face mask and throat patch appears online in the journal Ecology.
"Golden-winged warblers have both a black face mask and a black throat patch, while blue-winged warblers have neither," said Marcella Baiz, postdoctoral researcher at Penn State and first ...
Some exoplanet searches could be missing nearly half of the Earth-sized planets around other stars. New findings from a team using the international Gemini Observatory and the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory suggest that Earth-sized worlds could be lurking undiscovered in binary star systems, hidden in the glare of their parent stars. As roughly half of all stars are in binary systems, this means that astronomers could be missing many Earth-sized worlds.
Earth-sized planets may be much more common than previously realized. Astronomers working at NASA Ames Research Center have used the twin telescopes of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, to determine that many planet-hosting ...
WASHINGTON, D.C.--A new study in Annals of Emergency Medicine highlights the importance of protecting physician residents--early-career doctors still in training--and emergency care teams from incidents of physical or verbal abuse.
The survey of 123 physicians, residents, and staff in one emergency department found that 78 percent of all health care workers experienced a violent assault in the prior 12 months, including more than one in five (22 percent) emergency physician residents. Eighty-nine percent of residents experienced verbal assault by a patient in the prior 12 months, compared to 80 percent of other health care workers.
"Violent ...
Philadelphia, June 28, 2021--Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have discovered that a specific type of lung cell exhibits unconventional immune properties and may contribute to the outcome of respiratory viral infections. The researchers focused on type II alveolar (AT2) cells, which are non-immune cells of the lung that are critical for basic lung health and tissue repair after lung injury. They found that AT2 cells express high levels of major histocompatibility complex II (MHC-II), an important immune system trigger, and that AT2 MHC-II expression appears to confer an appreciable ...
Researchers at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have leveraged existing advanced X-ray microscopy techniques to bridge the gap between MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and electron microscopy imaging, providing a viable pipeline for multiscale whole brain imaging within the same brain. The proof-of-concept demonstration involved imaging an entire mouse brain across five orders of magnitude of resolution, a step which researchers say will better connect existing imaging approaches and uncover new details about the structure of the brain.
The advance, which was published on June 9 in NeuroImage, will allow ...
As social media and other online networking sites have grown in usage, so too has trolling - an internet practice in which users intentionally seek to draw others into pointless and, at times, uncivil conversations.
New research from Brigham Young University recently published in the journal of Social Media and Society sheds light on the motives and personality characteristics of internet trolls.
Through an online survey completed by over 400 Reddit users, the study found that individuals with dark triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) combined with schadenfreude - a German word meaning that one derives pleasure from another's misfortune - were more likely to demonstrate trolling behaviors.
"People who exhibit ...
A discovery by a team of researchers, led by a Geisinger professor, could yield a potential new treatment for breast cancer.
In a study published this month in Cell Reports, the team used small molecules known as peptides to disrupt a complex of two proteins, RBM39 and MLL1, that is found in breast cancer cells but not in normal cells.
The research team discovered that the abnormal interaction between RBM39 and MLL1 is required for breast cancer cells to multiply and survive. The team developed non-toxic peptides that prevent these proteins from interacting in breast cancer cells, disrupting their growth and survival.
"Because these proteins do not interact in normal ...
