By contrast, higher scores on neuroticism are always bad, having proved to be a risk factor for unhappiness, dysfunctional relationships, and mental-health problems. Research decisively shows that higher scores on extroversion are associated with greater happiness and broader social connections, higher scores on conscientiousness predict greater success in school and at work, and higher scores on agreeableness are associated with deeper relationships. Most people score near the middle on any given dimension, but some score toward one pole or the other. Openness: curiosity, unconventionality, imagination, receptivity to new ideas.Agreeableness: warmth, care for others, altruism, compassion, modesty.Conscientiousness: industriousness, discipline, rule abidance, organization.Neuroticism: anxiety, emotional instability, depressive tendencies, negative emotions.Extroversion: gregariousness, social dominance, enthusiasm, reward-seeking behavior.There are countless ways to differentiate one person from the next, but psychological scientists have settled on a relatively simple taxonomy, known widely as the Big Five: His Dispositionįifty years of empirical research in personality psychology have resulted in a scientific consensus regarding the most basic dimensions of human variability. My aim is to develop a dispassionate and analytical perspective on Trump, drawing upon some of the most important ideas and research findings in psychological science today. Trump declined to be interviewed for this story, but his life history has been well documented in his own books and speeches, in biographical sources, and in the press. In this essay, I will seek to uncover the key dispositions, cognitive styles, motivations, and self-conceptions that together comprise his unique psychological makeup. Trump’s personality is certainly extreme by any standard, and particularly rare for a presidential candidate many people who encounter the man-in negotiations or in interviews or on a debate stage or watching that debate on television-seem to find him flummoxing. While a range of factors, such as world events and political realities, determine what political leaders can and will do in office, foundational tendencies in human personality, which differ dramatically from one leader to the next, are among them. In the realm of politics, psychologists have recently demonstrated how fundamental features of human personality-such as extroversion and narcissism-shaped the distinctive leadership styles of past U. A large and rapidly growing body of research shows that people’s temperament, their characteristic motivations and goals, and their internal conceptions of themselves are powerful predictors of what they will feel, think, and do in the future, and powerful aids in explaining why. In recent years, however, psychologists have increasingly used the tools and concepts of psychological science to shed light on notable lives, as I did in a 2011 book on George W. Many early efforts relied upon untested, nonscientific ideas.
Ever since Sigmund Freud analyzed the life and art of Leonardo da Vinci, in 1910, scholars have applied psychological lenses to the lives of famous people. In creating this portrait, I will draw from well-validated concepts in the fields of personality, developmental, and social psychology. We enter the world prepared to perform roles and manage the impressions of others, with the ultimate evolutionary aim of getting along and getting ahead in the social groups that define who we are. As brainy social animals, human beings evolved to be consummate actors whose survival and ability to reproduce depend on the quality of our performances. Is Singer’s assessment too harsh? Perhaps it is, in at least one sense. Trump, when you are alone? Singer never got an answer, leaving him to conclude that the real-estate mogul who would become a reality-TV star and, after that, a leading candidate for president of the United States had managed to achieve something remarkable: “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.” I might have phrased Singer’s question this way: Who are you, Mr. “You really want to know what I consider ideal company?,” Trump replied. “O.K., I guess I’m asking, do you consider yourself ideal company?” Hoping to uncover the man behind the actor’s mask, Singer tried a different tack: What are you thinking about, Singer asked him, when you are shaving in front of the mirror in the morning? Trump, Singer writes, appeared baffled. Singer wondered what went through his mind when he was not playing the public role of Donald Trump.
The same feeling perplexed Mark Singer in the late 1990s when he was working on a profile of Trump for The New Yorker. The Outer-Borough President McKay Coppins
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