Personality: Obama in the Emotional World

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Back during the 2008 presidential election in the United States, readers of this blog may have found it strange that I chose to weigh in about the personality of Republican nominee John McCain, but not the personality of Democratic nominee--and now President--Barack Obama. This wasn't because of any political bias on my part, but simply because McCain's personality was clear to me, while Obama's was not. About a year later, I think I've seen enough evidence to be confident in classifying Obama as a "central" or "sexual" type within the emotional world.

This topic came up recently because of Ralph Nader's comments about Obama's personality during an appearance on the Open Source podcast. Nader described Obama as having a "harmony ideology personality. He's conflict-averse... He loves to be loved." When I heard that, I realized that Nader was basically describing a "sexual" type. While "harmony ideology" can be found in just about any world besides the physical world, the idea of "loving to be loved" is central to the "sexual" type. They are the "stars" of the world, used to being the center of attention and affection, and will take actions to further that kind of position. When one "sexual" type once had a conflict with an unhealthy person, she complained to me: "I don't understand. Everybody is supposed to like me!"

Obama's legislative technique seems to back up this assessment. Rather than take principled positions, his tendency has been to set a broadly-agreed upon goal and try to get everyone on board to achieve it. In the health care debate, the White House cut deals with stakeholder groups, then has let Congress work out the unpopular details. During the legislative phase, there has been an emphasis to try to get support from Republicans. There may have been good political reasons to do these things, but it's happened often enough now that that I take it as a pattern consistent with a "everyone should love me" (and my ideas), "sexual"-type perspective.

The expert who developed the personality theory that I use, Olympic trainer Bob Cooley, was willing to make the categorization of Obama as a "sexual" type long ago. Amongst other things, Cooley reflected on how Obama appeared as different things to different people during the campaign, which is often the sign of a "sexual" type finding ways to be attractive to a wide range of people.

So why didn't I follow along? The main problem was that Obama really doesn't look like a "sexual" type. "Sexual" types tend to be very round people--both men and women. Bill Clinton, deep in the emotional world in terms of type, would be believable as a "sexual" type based on appearance. Obama doesn't look anything like Clinton. There were other things, but most of those could be explained away. Appearance was the sticking point. The fact that Obama smokes could be a partial explanation of his physical stature, as smoking can lead to a more slender figure, and certainly the fact that he stays in shape would partially explain it as well. Yet, I've still never met another "sexual" that looked like Obama, including those that smoked.

That may be the point. I've never met a "sexual" type who is as successful as Obama (who is?), and it is a well-documented phenomenon that more successful people tend to take on more traits of their balancing type, including physical appearance. Some of us have argued that Obama looks like a "brain" type, and that is the balancing type of the "sexual" type.

So, in light of a long string of behavior that appears to be "sexual" type in nature and with counter-evidence seemingly all explained away, I give in. I agree that Barack Obama is most likely a "sexual" type, an appropriate type to be president of a country that shares his emotional world.