Modern American Presidents Essay

Dani Collins
Mr. Meyer
ACP Modern US History
18 May 2017
The Correlation Between Personality and Popularity of the Modern US Presidents
Why did FDR, Kennedy and Reagan win the hearts of America, while G.W. Bush, Nixon and Hoover are thought of as practically failures? Why is Eisenhower more popular than Carter? These are questions that not many people think about on a day-to-day basis- in fact, many people just accept, sometimes even without much proof, that certain presidents were better than others. Sure, the circumstances in which they were in office probably helped people choose which presidents are better than other (FDR in getting America out of the Great Depression, vs. say, Nixon and how he dealt with Vietnam), but it goes deeper than
In fact, out of the twenty modern presidents, eight have been extroverts. This is curious, due to the fact that in America, the percentage of extroverts to introverts is roughly fifty-fifty (Hollister, 2006a). The ratio of extroverts to introverts among the US presidents is forty to sixty, meaning that introverts are more likely to be elected. Yet, even with that considered, the majority of extroverted presidents are on the upper half of the popularity scale, which displays a connection between extroverted presidents and
Upon further examination, it becomes apparent that presidents who are intuitives are predominantly more popular than sensors. As this part of the MBTI type shows how a person prefers to take in information, this demonstrates a partiality towards people who look at the bigger picture over using their senses. Due to intuitives only making up about thirty-five percent of the American population, this signifies that intuitives are overrepresented among US presidents (Hollister, 2006b). This actually makes some sense, due to intuitives being known for designing creative solutions and planning for the future, which seems like it would be advantageous for the president of a