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Personality Effects on American Foreign Policy, 1898–1968: A Test of Interpersonal Generalization Theory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Lloyd S. Etheredge
Lloyd S. Etheredge*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Whether personality characteristics of American leaders crucially determine major American foreign policy decisions has been a matter of considerable disagreement. A test of two hypotheses drawn from interpersonal generalization theory shows such influences have probably been crucial in a number of cases in American foreign policy between 1898 and 1968. In 49 cases of intraelite disagreement on force-related issues and 13 cases of intraelite disagreement on inclusionary issues the direction of disagreement could be predicted in over 75 percent of the cases by knowledge of individual differences in interpersonal relations. A four-fold speculative typology suggests fundamental personality-based differences in orientation towards America's preferred operating style and role in the international system (e.g., introverts are drawn toward impersonal principles and mechanisms like balance of power–or in an earlier period to international law).

The evidence implies that one source of war and hard-line foreign policy is the structure of self-selection and recruitment to high office in the American political system. As well, the systematic tendency to self-expressive personalization in major foreign policy decisions probably increases the rate of error of American elites.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 434 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

*

I would like to express my appreciation to Chris Achen, Hayward Alker, Bob Axekod, Paul Berman, Alexander L. George, Norman Graebner, Charles Heck, Ole Holsti, Arnold Kanter, Robert E. Lane, John McConahay, Ken McVicar, the late Conrad Morrow, David Rothberg, Doug Sprague, and H. Bradford Westerfield for comments, support, and other assistance. I am grateful for the early encouragement of Harold D. Lasswell and J. D. Barber. Gail Lopata, Lisa Gregorie and Linda Woolford typed the manuscript.

References

1 The traditional argument against exploring “non-rational” influence is Verba, Sidney, “Assumptions of Rationality and Non-Rationality in Models of the International System” in The International System: Theoretical Essays, ed. Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 93–117Google Scholar. On the traditional preponderance of the Rational Actor model see, for example, Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), p. 10Google Scholar. Kreuger remarks on the historiography of American foreign policy that “most American historians view diplomacy as the outcome of decisions made by rational men in pursuit of the national interest” (p. 93). Kreuger, Thomas A., “The Social Origins of Recent American Foreign Policy,” Journal of Social History, 7 (Fall 1973), 93–101Google Scholar. The emerging historiographic challenge to this paradigm is discussed in Crunden, Robert M., “Freud, Erikson, and the Historian: A Bibliographic Survey,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 4 (Spring 1973), 48–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Useful reviews are Eckhardt, W. and Lentz, T., “Factors of War/Peace Attitudes,” Peace Research Reviews, 1 (October 1967)Google Scholar, entire; Eckhardt, W., “Ideology and Personality in Social Attitudes,” Peace Research Reviews, 3 (April 1969)Google Scholar, entire; Herbert McClosky provides a discussion of both elite and mass data in his “Personality and Attitude Correlates of Foreign Policy Orientation” in Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, ed. Rosenau, James N. (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 51–109Google Scholar; Christiansen, Bjorn, Attitudes Towards Foreign Affairs as a Function of Personality (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Sniderman, Paul and Citrin, Jack, “Psychological Sources of Political Belief: Self-Esteem and Isolationist Attitudes,” American Political Science Review, 65 (06 1971), 401–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See for example Alexander, L. and George, Juliette, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York: Dover, 1964)Google Scholar; Barber, James D., The Presidential Character (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972)Google Scholar; De Rivera, Joseph, The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1968)Google Scholar; Rogow, Arnold, James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics, and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1963)Google Scholar; Mazlish, Bruce, In Search of Nixon (New York: Basic Books, 1972)Google Scholar; Glad, Betty, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Kearns, Doris, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976)Google Scholar. Somewhat overdrawn is Clinch, Nancy, The Kennedy Neurosis (New York: Giossett, 1973)Google Scholar. See also the studies based on Alexander George's “operational code” approach: Holsti, Ole, “Cognitive Dynamics and the Image of the Enemy: Dulles and Russia” in Enemies in Politics, ed. Finley, David, Holsti, Ole R. and Fagen, Richard R. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), pp. 25–96Google Scholar; Holsti, Ole, “The Operational Code Approach to the Study of Political Leaders: John Foster Dulles' Philosophical and Instrumental Beliefs,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 3 (March 1970), 123–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alexander L. George and Ole R. Holsti, “Operational Code Belief Systems and Foreign Policy Decision-Making” (unpublished); see also the series of papers prepared for the annual meeting of the 1973 American Political Science Association: G. G. Gutierrez, “Dean Rusk and Southeast Asia: An Operational Code Analysis”; Kurt Tweraser, “Senator Fulbright's Operational Code as Warrant for His Foreign Policy Advocacy, 1943–1967: Towards Increasing the Explanatory Power of Decisional Premises”; Loch Johnson, “Operational Codes and the Prediction of Leadership Behavior: Senator Church at Mid-Career.” See also Hermann, Margaret G., “How Leaders Process Information and the Effect on Foreign Policy: An Exploratory Study,” in Comparing Foreign Policies: Theories Findings and Methods, ed. Rosenau, James N. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1974)Google Scholar.

4 Major results are reported in Etheredge, Lloyd S., A World of Men: The Private Sources of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, in press)Google Scholar; see also Mennis, Bernard, American Foreign Policy Officials: Who They Are and What They Believe Regarding International Politics (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Garnham, David C., Attitude and Personality Patterns of American Foreign Affairs (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1971)Google Scholar.

5 Christiansen, , Attitudes Towards Foreign Affairs as a Function of Personality (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

6 Eckhardt, “Ideology and Personality”; Eckhardt and Lentz, “Factors of War/Peace Attitudes.”

7 Etheredge, A World of Men: The Private Sources of American Foreign Policy.

8 I am here following Greenstein's methodological lead. However, I have altered his concept of “actor dispensability” to the slightly more constrained concept of “elite actor interchangeability,” a modification which seems more useful for focusing upon different levels of analysis. See Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics: Problems of Evidence, Inference, and Conceptualization (Chicago: Markham, 1969)Google Scholar, Ch. 2.

9 Janis, Irving L., Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972)Google Scholar.

10 It is conceivable that, with more cases, a less simple and more differentiated approach would be useful. Thus the present personality dimension may predict best to use of force against smaller countries but relations with autonomously powerful opponents in domestic politics might predict better to relations with the Soviet Union since World War II. For all his bullying tendencies toward subordinates Lyndon Johnson was more restrained and empathetic in dealing with the Soviet Union.

11 Donley, R. E. and Winter, D.G., “Measuring the Motives of Public Officials at a Distance: An Exploratory Study of American Presidents,” Behavioral Science, 15 (1970), 227–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Winter, David G., The Power Motive (New York: Free Press, 1973), pp. 212–18Google Scholar. Methodological issues of attributing variations in such scores primarily to personality variations are, of course, present and are discussed in Donley and Winter. For evidence that changes in national mood may produce different American leaders, see McClelland, David, Power: The Inner Experience (New York: Irvington, 1975)Google Scholar.

12 The use of trained political scientists can be challenged on the grounds they may bring bias to such tasks. My own feeling is that they bring a useful sensitivity to power. For example Franklin Roosevelt's chaotic administrative style might be interpreted as reflecting low dominance. The judges, however, saw this as a style consciously designed to heighten presidential dominance. I think they were correct in this view, but it is true that other judges could have different assessments. The same comment applies to the Truman coding problem discussed next in the text.

13 Graebner, Norman A., An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961)Google Scholar.

14 Jessup, Phllip C., Elihu Root, Vol. 2 (New York: Dodd, 1938), p. 250Google Scholar.

15 Thus among the low-dominance individuals the introverts (Maintainers) should be more likely to use force to maintain the status quo balance.

16 Schlesinger, Arthur M., A Thousand Days (New York: Houghton, 1965), p. 435Google Scholar.

17 Lasswell, Harold D., Psychopathology and Politics (New York: Viking, 1960)Google Scholar.

18 See the elaboration of these conclusions in Etheredge, , A World of Men (to be published in fall, 1978)Google Scholar and Lloyd Etheredge, “Hardball Politics: A Model” (forthcoming). For supporting evidence from anthropology that societies in which males are ambitious and competitive are more likely to go to war, see Levinson, David, “What Have We Learned from Cross-Cultural Surveys?” American Behavioral Scientist, 20 (1977), 757–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.