In past posts, I have been recounting the Goldwater v. Ginzburg libel trial. Fact magazine's September, 1964 issue was devoted to whether Senator Goldwater, who was then running for US President, was sufficiently mentally healthy to lead the nation. After losing the election, Senator Goldwater accused Fact's publisher and editor of defaming his character.
The libel trial that followed provided real-life examples of the challenges surrounding accurate personality judgments and the ethics and laws that apply to such judgments. One issue at the trial was Fact magazine's poll of psychiatrists as to Senator Goldwater's mental state.
Fact's polling methods were biased against Goldwater. Moreover, by the time the poll was conducted the psychiatrists, and the general public as well, were disenchanted with the Senator as a candidate.
Nonetheless, a number of diverse, strongly-stated psychiatric opinions were collected and reprinted. I am wondering what, if anything, the letters tell us about the Senator's character. Can we cut through the evaluative bias to something more accurate?
The English Moral philosopher R. M. Hare distinguished between the descriptive aspects of what we say about a topic, and the evaluative aspects. Hare said we could characterize a strawberry evaluatively by saying, "that tastes great," or "this one is delicious," or we could describe it more descriptively (and neutrally): emphasizing such facts as it is "pock-marked, large, red, juicy, and moderately sweet."
The same distinction between evaluation and description applies to characterizing people's personalities.
Professor Dean Peabody of Swarthmore College (JPG) has sought relatively non-evaluative dimensions of personality by which we might judge others. So much of judging is evaluative that it seems almost impossible to find non-evaluative approaches, but Peabody and his colleagues, I think, provide some insight as to how it might be done.
Peabody's approach begins with the observation that we often use positive and negative words for the same element of personality, depending upon whether we like the quality or not. For example, we might witness a person's behavior and call her "bold" if we like what she did, or "reckless" if we did not. In both instances we acknowledge a person took a risk, but the evaluations are different. Similarly, a risk-avoidant person might be labeled "prudent" if we think highly of her, or "timid" if we think less highly of her choices.
One can create a number of these word-pairs that describe the same quality from positive and negative perspectives: self-controlled and inhibited, relaxed and lethargic, alert and tense, open-minded and noncommittal, and steady and inflexible.
Using such word couplets, Peabody has arrived at four non-evaluative descriptions of a person that he believes are commonly used:
- Assertive: people are confident, forceful, rough, and domineering.
- Unassertive: people are modest, mild-tempered, meek, naïve, submissive.
- Tight: people are orderly, economical, miserly, systematic and punctual.
- Loose: people are social, happy-go-lucky, impulsive, and disorganized.
(Please note that the above four categories represent my simplification of Peabody's more nuanced approach).
I engaged in a very preliminary and informal application of Peabody's system to the Fact poll. To do so, I chose two pro- and two con-Goldwater letters, and listed how the psychiatrists characterized the Senator.
The positive letter-writers described Goldwater as possessing "emotional stability" "emotional control," and as being "aggressive," "active," "devoted to high principles," "realistic," "emotionally tense," "not aggressive," and someone who [can] "take a firm stand."
The negative letter-writers described Goldwater as "aggressive," "impulsive," "rigid," and [possessing] "poor hostility control."
Using Peabody's classification, it seemed to me that despite their contrasting views, the four letter-writers agreed that Goldwater was highly "Assertive."
There was less agreement as to "Loose." The pro-Goldwater letters were unconcerned about this, perceiving the Senator as emotionally controlled. The anti-Goldwater letter writers, however, rasied the issue (e.g., "impulsive," "poor hostility control"). So, I will assign the Senator a moderate "Loose" score (this seems consistent to me with other biographical information about him).
Peabody, with Professors Gerard Saucier and Fritz Ostendorf, has recently generalized his work across both English and German-language terms. The system seems careful, thoughtful, and an inventive method for being less evaluative and more descriptive.
Using the approach provided me with a possible way to cut through some of the strong opinions expressed in the Fact survey and arrive at what might be a more descriptive (rather than evaluative) analysis of Senator Goldwater's character.
I intended this analysis to demonstrate Professor Peabody's system rather than as any conclusive statement about Senator Goldwater's personality: My methodology is, at best, suggestive of what a better analysis might show.
That said, to carry the example through, the Senator appeared Assertive and (possibly) moderately Loose. Peabody's idea is that psychiatrists writing opinions for and against the Senator might nonetheless agree on some descriptions. Assuming this depiction of the Senator were borne out, it might explain something about the controversies surrounding his campaign for president.
The 1964 election was a moment in history when the possibility of nuclear war was very much on the public's mind. A candidate who appeared high in Assertiveness, with its qualities of dominance and roughness, combined with moderate Looseness, with its implications of impulsivity, might not have seemed at the time like a good choice for US President, particularly if the impulsivity-Looseness issue were emphasized.
The Fact poll of psychiatrists, biased though its methodology was, need not be entirely dismissed. Rather, by applying careful analyses, one might be able to capture some basic but informative descriptions of the Senator's personality.
Notes
The discussion of descriptive vs. evaluative comments come from p. 111 of Hare, R. M. (1952). The language of morals. Oxford, England: Clarendon.
Non-evaluative dimensions of personality were discussed by Saucier, G., Ostendorf, F., Peabody, D. (2001). Journal of Personality, 69, 537-582. And in Peabody, D. (1967). Trait inferences: Evaluative and descriptive aspects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph, 7 (4, Whole No. 644), as well as in other studies.
Sometimes this quality of alternate viewpoints is called "transvaluing." See, for example, Shawver, L. & Lubach, J. (1977). "Value attribution in group psychotherapy." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 45(2), 228-236.
The positive letters were from Robert T. Dean (p. 45) and Carl F. Vernlund (pp. 39-40). The negative letters were from Name Withheld (Boston) and Name Withheld (Chicago), (both p. 47). All letters appeared in: Boroson, W. (1964, September/October). What psychiatrists say about Goldwater. Fact, 1, pp. 24-64.
Corrections/edits: I wrestled with the last two paragraphs for 30 min. after posting.
Copyright (c) 2009 John D. Mayer
