មាតិកា
Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections surprised everyone. He was considered too arrogant, rude and narcissistic even for a politician. But it turned out that these qualities do not interfere with success with the public. Psychologists have tried to understand this paradox.
In big politics, personality still plays a big role. We believe that a person in authority should be worthy of it. Democracy seems to exist then, to choose the most deserving. But in practice, it turns out that «dark» personality traits often coexist with success.
In the US elections, both candidates received roughly equal numbers of rotten tomatoes. Trump was accused of racism, he was reminded of insulting remarks about women, they made fun of his hair. Clinton, too, has earned a reputation as a cynical and hypocritical politician. But these people are at the top. Is there any explanation for this?
Formula of (folk) love
Many science journalists and psychologists have tried to understand what personality traits of these two people make them both attractive and repulsive — at least as public politicians. So, the candidates were analyzed using the well-known Big Five test. It is actively used in their work by recruiters and school psychologists.
The test profile, as the name implies, includes five indicators: extraversion (how sociable you are), goodwill (are you ready to meet others halfway), conscientiousness (how responsibly you approach what you do and how you live), neuroticism ( how emotionally stable you are) and openness to new experiences.
The ability to earn the trust of people and at the same time leave them without regret when it is profitable is a classic tactic of sociopaths.
But this method has been criticized more than once: in particular, the «Five» cannot determine a person’s propensity for antisocial behavior (for example, deceit and duplicity). The ability to win over people, earn their trust, and at the same time abandon them without regret when it is profitable is a classic tactic of sociopaths.
The missing indicator «honesty — propensity to deceive» is in the HEXACO test. Canadian psychologists, with the help of a panel of experts, tested both candidates and identified traits in both that belong to the so-called Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism).
«Both are good»
According to the researchers, low scores on the Honesty-Humility scale mean that a person tends to “manipulate others, exploit them, feel super-important and indispensable, violate norms of behavior for their own benefit.”
The combination of other traits indicates how well a person is able to hide their true intentions and what methods they prefer to use to achieve their goals. It is the general combination that determines whether a person becomes a street extortionist, a successful stock speculator or a politician.
Hillary Clinton received low scores in the honesty-humility and emotionality categories, leading them to suggest that she «has some Machiavellian-type traits.»
Donald Trump turned out to be even closer to this type: researchers rated him as unscrupulous, unfriendly and immodest. “His personality rating is more in line with the psychopath and narcissist type,” the authors write. “Such clearly anti-social traits make it surprising why so many Americans support Trump.”
«Strong people are always a little rough…»
Given the highly anti-social nature of Trump’s personality, how was he able to achieve such recognition? “One possibility,” study author Beth Visser and her colleagues suggest, “is that people perceive him not as a person with whom they would have to deal in life, but as an example of a successful person who is able to achieve goals.” Even those voters who voted for Clinton did not hesitate to admit that they themselves would like to be like Trump.
Perhaps this is the key to why the same person in different contexts and in different people can evoke completely opposite emotions.
Low responsiveness may be associated with arrogance in assessments, but it can be a valuable quality for an entrepreneur and politician who is expected to be decisive and tough in defending the interests of a company or country.
Low emotional sensitivity can bring us accusations of rudeness, but help in work: for example, where you need to make difficult decisions and take risks. Isn’t that what is usually expected of a leader?
“You don’t whistle like that, you don’t wave your wings like that”
What killed Trump’s rival? According to the researchers, stereotypes played against her: the image of Clinton does not fit at all with the criteria by which a woman is evaluated in society. This is especially true for low indicators of modesty and emotionality.
Linguist Deborah Tannen calls this a «double trap»: society requires a woman to be compliant and gentle, and a politician to be firm, able to command and get her own way.
It is interesting that the results of an unusual experiment of Russian programmers from the Mail.ru Group are consonant with these conclusions. They used a neural network — a learning program — to predict who would become the next president of the United States. First, the program processed 14 million pictures of people, decomposing them into 21 categories. She was then given the task of “guessing” which category the image she was unfamiliar with belonged to.
She described Trump with the words «ex-president», «president», «secretary general», «US president, president», and Clinton — «secretary of state», «donna», «first lady», «auditor», «girl».
សម្រាប់ព័ត៌មានបន្ថែម, Research Digest, British Psychological Society.