Measuring the motives of public officials at a distance: An exploratory study of american presidents

The inaugural addresses of American Presidents from 1905-1969 were scored for the need for Achievement (n Ach) and the need for Power (n Power), using procedures originally developed for scoring individual TAT protocols. The resulting motive scores are closely related to the consensus judgment of historians and political scientists concerning those Presidential administrations. Thus the technique of scoring speeches for psychological imagery appears to be a promising way to measure the personality characteristics of significant political actors, who are usually unavailable for standard personality assessment procedures. Moreover, the technique appears to have promise for predicting the future course of political action, given the motive scores of actors. Several methodological issues are discussed.