How does personality affect foreign policy making?

If there has been one important lesson coming from all the research in social and personality psychology, it is that situations control behavior to an unprecedented degree. It is no longer meaningful, as it once was, to talk in terms of personality “types,” of persons “low in ego strength,” or of “authoritarians”-at least it is not meaningful if we wish to account for any substantial portion of an individual’s behavior. Rather, we must look to the situation in which the behavior was elicited and is maintained if we hope ever to find satisfactory explanations for it. The causes of behavior we have learned more likely to reside in the nature of the environment than inside the person. And although the operation of situational forces can be subtle and complex in the control of behavior, it can also be extremely powerful. Research seems to indicate that in “real life” we are often faced with a situation or role which demands behavior of a certain kind and, over a period of time, our beliefs are likely to change in a way consistent with this situation or role behavior.

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