The 10 Most Narcissistic U.S. Presidents
Emory University psychological scientist Scott Lilienfeld and his student Ashley Watts recently found evidence that a personality trait called “grandiose narcissism” predicts greatness in U.S. presidents—and also malignancy. They report this evidence in an article that will appear in the journal Psychological Science in the months ahead. In the course of doing this research, they had experts rate the first 42 American leaders on this and other personality dimensions. Here are the ten presidents who ranked highest on grandiose narcissism, and the ten who ranked lowest:
1. Lyndon Johnson
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Andrew Jackson
4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
5. John Kennedy
6. Richard Nixon
7. Bill Clinton
8. Chester Arthur
9. Andrew Johnson
10. Woodrow Wilson
…
33. James Garfield
34. William McKinley
35. Rutherford B. Hayes
36. James Madison
37. William Howard Taft
38. Calvin Coolidge
39. Ulysses Grant
40. Grover Cleveland
41. James Monroe
42.Millard Fillmore
For those interested in the modern presidency, George W. Bush ranked 11, much higher than his father, George H.W. Bush, who ranked 26. Ronald Reagan ranked 15. Jimmy Carter ranked 20, just below George Washington. And Ford ranked 31, just above Abraham Lincoln. The study did not include Barack Obama.
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