GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have many psychological similarities, according to one expert, making Mr. Trump’s claim he’d “get along very well,” with the Russian leader probable.
“Both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are men with enormous power who have held it for a long time, and we know that enormous power that’s unconstrained can lead to a number of behavioral and personality changes in the brain over a period of time,” said Ian Robertson, a psychology professor at Trinity College in Dublin, who says winning — whether it be in sports, politics or in the business world — is the single most important thing that shapes people’s lives.
Mr. Robertson has studied the art of winning and amassing power, and what it can mean on the human race. He argues in his book “The Winner Effect” that the reason its fun to win is because it’s largely chemical.
When men like Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump get praised or build their dominance either over a particular region in the world or on a business endeavor, it increases their sense of pleasure and snaps on their reward network, Mr. Robertson said.
The victories increase the body’s production of testosterone, which in turn increases the chemical messenger dopamine, which hits the reward network in the brain, and makes you feel better, he said.
“This human reaction makes them feel good, powerful, a little smarter, decisive and confident in their own vision,” said Mr. Robertson of the body’s chemical reaction to winning. “But the downsides are dopamine, like many of the brain’s messengers, can improve your judgment up to a particular sweet spot, and if it’s too long and too much, can push you to the other side — which involve overconfidence, and appetite for even more power, a loss of empathy, difficulty in seeing others points of view and a blunted perspective of risk.”
And it’s a chemical process that many personality types can become addicted to — with many craving additional victories and powerful pursuits, like running for president in Mr. Trump’s case or entering Syria, as Mr. Putin has done.
“The more power you have, the more you want more power. It’s an appetite that cannot be satisfied,” Mr. Robertson said.
But it’s also a quality that many are attracted to.
“People who are harvesting a sense of loss tend to be very attracted to people who have power and offer the promise of giving them power,” Mr. Robertson said. “Russia, with the failure and humiliation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, what Putin has offered them, feeling part of his exercise of power in the world — they feel personally stronger by seeing their tough leader taking tough actions.
In Moscow, they say in the weather forecast, the weather is perfect for airstrikes — it’s a very primitive psychological empowerment of people who feel stressed and not empowered,” he said.
Mr. Trump is striking a similar chord with the American public, Mr. Robertson said.
“Trump similarly makes the American population feel empowered vis-a-vis statements about immigrants, and he makes them feel stronger and better vicariously through his victories. There’s more personal empowerment by strong leaders who take strong positions, especially when they demonize an ’out’ group to make the ’in’ group feel stronger. This increases the ’in’ group’s oxytocin in the brain, which is connected to social bonding in the brain, and makes them feel good,” he said.
Every leader, throughout the world, in sports and business needs to have an appetite for power, though those appetites very, Mr. Robertson said.
“You can’t have a leader who doesn’t have an appetite for power, because being in power is too stressful,” he said.
Only people who crave winning can offset, with the hormones they create, the actual stress of being in that position, Mr. Robertson said. People who don’t crave it, won’t be as successful, because their bodily hormones won’t work in the same way to offset the stress.
But to temper a leader’s quest for power — and the addictive qualities of it — a government or institution must have checks and balances, or the leader needs to have a higher set of ethics, a belief in a higher being other than themselves, either by way of religion or rule of law.
“Most democracies in the world have come to a point where they limit the term of office between eight and 10 years,” Mr. Robertson said. “There’s a reason for that.”
• Kelly Riddell can be reached at kriddell@washingtontimes.com.
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