Presidential popularity stems from matching voters’ motives while historical success reflects leader personality.

Evidence

David Winter (Reading 6) blends aspects of these different research styles to shed light on the ways in which the personalities of specific political leaders interact with characteristics of the general population to predict the degree to which the leader is popular and, from a historical perspective, ultimately deemed to be successful. By comparing the motive profiles of American presidents from George Washington (1789) to Ronald Reagan (1981) with respect to power, affiliation, and achievement with the motivational themes that were found to dominate popular culture during the period in which they were elected, Winter was able to examine distinctive hypotheses about leadership style (personality) and leader-follower congruence (personality-situation interaction). He found that presidential popularity (but not presidential success) was significantly correlated with the degree of congruence between a leader and his followers. By contrast, historical success (but not presidential popularity) was significantly correlated with the personality characteristics of the leader, especially strong motivations for power, impact, and prestige. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 118

Categorization

• QUESTION: The popularity-success dissociation is intriguing — is this replicated in non-US executives (CEOs, monarchs) and does leader-follower congruence still matter in the social media era where follower preferences are constructed by the leader’s own platform?
• XREF: connects to: Discrepant presidents historically outperform congruent ones — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 1362