But first, two methodological points should be made. One is that the empirical studies upon which I base my comparisons and conclusions represent the fruits of a comprehensive program of research extended by multivariate psychologists extending over more than twenty years. The results I have used comprise the tip of a pyramid of findings based on numerous, well-articulated studies involving: (1) replications across samples, across attitudes, and across different instruments (e.g., self-rating data, objective data, questionnaire data); (2) hundreds of variables combining clinical, psychological, physiological, and behavioral measures; (3) multiple investigations into their reliability and validity; (4) and a variety of mathematical and statistical studies of the underlying methodology. Accordingly, the personality that has emerged is a unified and multidimensional whole, where all the pieces have been fitted together in regard to this whole and in the context of this extended research program.

It is for this reason that I am relying on the above research results to counter those based on the works of, say, David McClelland, T.W. Adorno, David Riesman, and the like. The research underlying such presumed motives as the achievement-desire, need for power, other-directedness, and soft versus tough mindedness is not based on the same, well-constructed, comprehensive and extended research program. Most are founded on ad hoc instruments and scales, whose dimensionality, reliability, and validity are unclear and whose relationship to other aspects of the personality are unknown. It is one thing to take twelve ad hoc variables and data on a questionnaire, analyze them, and emerge with a scale measuring a loudly proclaimed x type of personality. It is another to define a personality component within the context of a comprehensive program of research covering the whole personality.

The second point is that, granting the preeminence that should be given multivariate experimental research, the results of this research represent only one of many perspectives on the personality which are totally consistent with the multivariate data, instruments, replications, variables, and methodology. Its results, with few exceptions, are from the perspective of what is called oblique simple structure,¹ which is a particular framework within which personality data are viewed. As in Einsteinian space-time, where with a shift in the observer's point of view the framework on events can shift also, the framework within which this personality research is seen can alter with the observer's methodological perspective. That is, the results emerging from multivariate experimental research provide one way of looking at the personality which is consistent with the data and mathematical model. Of course, this problem of perspective is intrinsic to all personality scales, dimensions, and types proposed over the years.

The point to this is that a question about the existence of, say, an authoritarian personality is not fully answered by surveying multivariate research findings, for it might be that the authoritarian personality is only a different perspective consistent with this data and mathematical model.² While this is possible, however, it is unlikely that, given the mutually articulated and comprehensive nature of the multivariate personality research, a favored personality scale or dimension should exist in its pure form as an alternative perspective without leaving a projection on these results.

An immediate problem in relating power to motivation is the ambiguity of the concept. What is power? The most popular meaning of power in the social sciences is of coercion: the ability to use threat of deprivations to get someone to do what they would otherwise not do. However, this is a narrow meaning, which does not take into account the power of love, persuasion, rewards, legitimacy (authority), or control over a situation or opportunities (manipulative power). Moreover, there is pure physical power, the ability to use physical force against another or nature.

These kinds of power, however, are all intentional; they are directed at another or nature in order to achieve some goal or as an end in themselves. Power, however, also can be unintentionally manifested, as with the unconscious effect of a beautiful girl at a party. It can be the expression of being, the active becoming of one's unique character, the assertion of life and identity. It is in this sense that I have considered power as an aspect of reality, as an active manifesting of dispositions.

But what meaning should we take in relating power to motivations? Let us take both the broad and narrow meanings of power. Broadly, the motivation to power is to manifest, to assert, oneself against the world. This I will call the drive for identive power. Narrowly, the motivation to power is to dominate others through force, threats (coercion), rewards (bargaining), persuasion, manipulation, or love. This can be called the drive for domination, the power over others.

To return to the basic concern, do we find a drive for identive power or for domination? First, consider our central superordinate goal of self-esteem. Is this a power goal in either of these senses? Clearly, it is not a drive for domination. Of course, we can help achieve esteem through domination as long as it is acquired morally (according to our superego). However, there are other ways of enhancing self-esteem, such as through self-control, helping others, achieving some goal through hard work, and so on. As a matter of fact, Adler pointed out that the drive for power (as domination) is a psychotic perversion of the self-esteem goal, a goal having at its core an other-directed, social interest orientation.

This superordinate goal, however, as the drive toward self-completion, self-actualization, and perfection, toward what I call self-esteem, is the drive for identive power. Our central goal is the ever upward striving to manifest our own character, our own identity, and this is what self-esteem is all about. Thus, we find that our core drive is indeed a drive for power, but power meant broadly as the manifestation of being and not narrowly as dominance. It is this drive for identive power that constitutes Nietzsche's will-to-power. It is through the superordinate goal of self-esteem that the drive for identive power is manifest.

Then what about the drive for dominance? If not the superordinate goal, do we find it at the level of needs? The closest need is self-assertion, which has some of the characteristics of a drive to dominate. It includes being first rate, wanting to be admired, getting an increase in salary, and so on. However, this seems more a need for achievement and status than a drive for dominance as customarily understood. No other of the needs, such as sex, hunger, or security, comes close to the drive we are searching for.

Perhaps, then, what is taken for a drive, for a motivation, is really a temperament, a style of behaving from motives, rather than a motive itself. Upon looking at our common temperament components, we find at the highest level of organization a distinct dominance versus submissiveness³ component. This temperament discriminates between people who are self assertive, confident, aggressive, willful, and adventurous, and those who are submissive, retiring, intrapunitive, and timid. Judging by such characteristics, this temperament seems less an authoritarian syndrome than a measure of boldness or assertiveness in reaction to others and the environment. However, it clearly discriminates between leaders and followers, those who tend to be independent and self-willed and those who are dependent, between those who dominate and those who are submissive. Therefore, it comes close to power as dominance.

Thus, we find that power psychologically does have the central role often given it, that power theories make sense, and that our interpretation of political history in terms of power has a psychological basis. However, in being more specific, we clearly have to discriminate between identive power as manifested through our ever upward striving for esteem, and power as dominance. Identive power is seen through our superordinate goal, and in this sense, such power is a central sentiment, a core drive and ultimate desire.⁴ Although related to the self-assertive need, however, power as dominance is not a primary drive. It is not basically motivational, but temperamental. It largely consists of the dominance temperament, which defines the manner or style in which one satisfies one's needs, rather than a need itself.

In short, power psychologically does have a central motivational role often given to it for all people: the drive for identive power is manifested through the superordinate goal of self-esteem, and the drive for power as dominance is related to the self-assertive need. Rather than being a motive, however, dominance is primarily a temperament, a characteristic way of behaving.

The closest we come to this need for achievement among the motivational components is that for self-assertion. This need involves,⁶ among other things, wanting to increase one's salary, being first rate in one's job, excelling colleagues, enjoying making a profit, and wanting to be admired. This is very close to what is meant by the need to achieve, for self-assertion clearly involves a need to improve one's status in the eyes of others. However, self-assertion is one among many needs and therefore not a central drive nor as evidently important in the personality as McClelland and followers assume. Moreover, there is no common sentiment emerging which subsidiates mainly to this need. The closest is the self-sentiment, which in part does involve being first rate, but is mainly concerned with the self-ideal and esteem that are compatible with both the quiet "low-achievement" harmony of a Buddhist monk and the go-get-'em "high achievement" drive of a Texas oilman.

Turning to the temperaments, two components share aspects of McClelland's need for achievement. One is the dominance versus submissiveness component, which was described in the last section. The aggressive, willful, adventurous aspects of this dimension partly refer to the characteristics of a high achievement oriented person. The second component is ego strength versus proneness to neuroticism.⁷ The high ego strength person is emotionally stable, realistic, mature, calm, and loyal. Moreover, this temperament has been found correlated with a strong motivation for professional status and success as a leader. At the highest level of organization of temperaments, the ego strength and dominance components combine into an anxiety versus integration temperament,⁸ where integrated temperaments are those with high ego strength, dominance, and intelligence, among other characteristics.

Thus, the need for achievement is mainly reflected in the need for self-assertion and in strong egos and dominating temperaments.

A first question is whether a need for status and a need for achievement are different animals. The precise meaning of a need for achievement is difficult to pin down conceptually in McClelland's work, but the core seems to comprise a need to do better at what one is doing and to be successful at it in the eyes of others. It is materially and outwardly oriented, and would not include "achievements" like being satisfied with one's position, Buddhist nirvana, Hindu peace, or Confucian inner harmony. Thus, high self-esteem would not necessarily mean high achievement. A man much hated and criticized by his colleagues and fired from his job because of his principles may have increased his self-esteem thereby ("I stood up for my principles in spite of the consequences") but would have "achieved" nothing in terms of a "need for achievement." The literature clearly implies a kind of up-the-ladder syndrome that capitalist entrepreneurs are famous for. Indeed, one has the impression that the need for achievement is precisely that which drives these people. Thus, my previous association of the need for achievement with the need for self-assertion and with strong egos and dominating temperaments is right on the mark.

The need for status is less problematical. Here, what is almost uniformly meant is a striving for high rank on those dimensions valued in our reference group, which may be ruthlessness for gang members, piousness for monks, respect for judges, wealth for businessmen, and power for politicians. Whatever the particulars, which vary from group to group and society to society, in general the drive for status means striving to improve our power, wealth, or prestige. It is, in effect, an outward concern with the ranking that we have in our reference group, and thus is not a matter of inner respect, harmony, and self-esteem.

The need for achievement, however, is a drive to do better in the outer world, even if at the cost of the respect of one's reference group. While the drive for status is a striving along those dimensions one's peers most value, the drive for achievement is to do materially or practically the best one can. Thus, a pious Catholic peasant may be striving for a status (prestige) among his friends based on his great piety, but in a material or practical sense, he may have achieved little and may be the least successful farmer in the church.

Given this meaning of status, we find that the need for self-assertion has such status-oriented characteristics (increasing one's salary, excelling colleagues, commanding admiration, having a good reputation) that it could have been interpreted wholly as a need for status, with the need for achievement facet described in the last section. Moreover, self-sentiment has some status attributes, such as preserving one's social reputation, and the self-esteem goal in part depends on doing what is socially acceptable (loss of face plays a role here). In its status aspects, then, the self-sentiment subsidiates to the self-assertive need: status motivationally is directly reflected in the self-assertive need and partly in the goal of self-esteem.

Like the need for achievement, striving for status is related to the existence of both a strong ego⁹ (which is correlated with motivation for professional status) and a dominating temperament¹⁰ and thus, at a more general level, with a temperament that shows dynamic integration. In addition, striving for status shows some relationship to a surgent temperament,¹¹ which comprises being cheerful, sociable, energetic, and talkative. This is understandable, since the way to status is eased by having just such characteristics.

In brief, a need for status is similar but distinct from an assumed need for achievement and is identical with the self-assertive need, related to the self-sentiment, high ego strength, surgency, and a dominating temperament.

Although the full meaning of authoritarian is not captured by any component or combination, there is clearly some relationship between the notion of authoritarian and the high ego and dominating temperament. Moreover, there is also some relationship to a tough-minded versus tender-minded¹⁴ and paranoid temperamental¹⁵ components. However at a higher level of organization, these distinct components are parts of separate temperamental clusters, indicating that an authoritarian syndrome has no underlying unity.

What then can be said about the authoritarian personality? It is not something that can be measured easily by some single scale. At best, it is a type of person who has a high dominance, high ego strength, and is tough-minded with paranoidal tendencies. But this type would characterize most successful people, and especially those in the sciences, such as political science, whether radical, leftist, liberal, moderate, conservative, or rightist. Surely, this is not the "authoritarian" type meant by those most excited by the notion.

At a higher level of organization, this component plays a role in a temperament called sensitive subjectivity,¹⁸ which is a general tendency to fantasy and impracticality, and a lack of will and ego strength. Thus, the idealists often seem to the realists.

Like the need for security, the pugnacity need has no direct association with the major sentiments, including the self-sentiment.

Now pugnacity (and its associated emotion of anger) as a need is a basic source of energy within the dynamic psychological field; it is a source of tension that the integrated self must handle by repressing it, channeling it, or allowing it free play. Pugnacity is at the core of a drive seeking gratification. With gratification the drive and thus the needs become extinguished.²⁸

Note the difference in that a person's need can wax and wane depending on gratification and stimuli, while his temperament remains relatively unchanging regardless of stimuli. Therefore, as an aspect of aggressiveness and a need, pugnacity is common among us all, although individuals may differ in their amount of this need from time to time.

Let us look further. Surely what some call aggressiveness is captured also by the self-assertive need, for self-assertion involves a status striving, an attempt to outdo one's fellows, a drive up the pecking order, which in other animals is a primary correlate of aggressiveness. Although there is no necessary association between status striving and violence, it is difficult to see how this need can be gratified without some personal aggressiveness. Finally, so far as the other needs are concerned, there appears to be some close relationship between the security need and anger; those who are insecure and fearsome are particularly prone to this emotion.

The association of aggressiveness and anger with needs explains why this disposition and emotion come and go; however, some people seem generally more aggressive than others, suggesting a temperamental trait as well. And the dominating temperament seems especially to be such a candidate. Those who are strongly self-assertive, confident, and adventurous also tend to be aggressive and pugnacious, prone to anger, quarrelsome, and destructive.²⁹ As would be expected from our experience with aggression among primates, dominance as a form of aggression is most manifest in males. Among females dominance becomes a composed (versus shy or bashful), poised, hypochondriac, and to a lesser extent, reserved, secretive, and independent-minded temperament.³⁰ In young children a dominating temperament goes along with disobedience, teasing, insensitiveness, not respecting the property of others, bossing, and attacking verbally and physically.

In other animals, the dominance pattern has been found associated with masculine sexual aggression, grabbing food from others, and bullying,³¹ as well as concentration of the male hormone (testosterone).

In apes, this temperament includes initiating most fighting, never cringing under aggression, mounting subordinates regardless of sex, preempting food supply, being more active, initiating more play, and doing more grooming.³²

In mental outpatients, the dominance temperament involves a lack of guilt feeling, little need of approval, strong assertiveness, and overt expression of hostility. Among psychotics, it includes bullying and aggressiveness; being assaultive, obscene, irritable, critical, and sarcastic; having temper outbursts; and using projection to escape unacceptable drives.³³

Little more evidence is needed, I think, to show that this temperament is basically aggressive. It clearly has the characteristics denoting aggression in animals and many of those we have come to associate with aggressive natures, aggressive persons, or aggression per se. Noteworthy is that this temperament seems partly (about half) hereditary, with some physiological correlation, and partly environmental. Heredity seems to contribute most to its variation from one family to another, whereas differences within families seem to be mainly due to environment.³⁴

One more distinct temperament component is related to aggression--the paranoidal versus innerly relaxed temperament. The paranoidal are suspicious, jealous, self-sufficient, and withdrawn; the innerly relaxed are trustful, understanding, composed, and socially at home. Of special interest here is that the paranoidal are also aggressive, short-tempered, extrapunitive, hostile,³⁵ and feel systematically persecuted.³⁶ Paranoidal psychotics, especially, are assaultive, uncooperative, delusioned, and obsessed; paranoidal mental outpatients have been found with obsessively hostile impulses and high tension.³⁷

This temperament appears both in normal and abnormal people (who tend to be at the extremes of the temperament) and is distinct from paranoid schizophrenia (which has been found as a separate temperament also existing in normal people). Those with a tendency toward the paranoidal end are basically characterized by high tension handled by projection as a defense mechanism, and by suspicion and hostility. Therefore, that aggression should also be part of or a result of temperament is understandable.

In sum, we find that aggressiveness as a potential does not have a unitary source. Rather, it comprises attitudes subsidiating to the needs for self-assertion (status striving) and pugnacity. Insofar as it derives from these needs, aggressiveness is dependent upon gratification and stimulation. However, aggressiveness is also a temperamental disposition, a style or manner some people carry with them through life and which involves dominating others and a tendency toward paranoia.

The subject of aggression is too central to my concern with violence and war to leave it at this. It will be reconsidered in a later volume in terms of frustration-aggression theories, relative deprivation, and its instinctual basis. In so considering aggression, what I have developed here will be most useful.

Whether integrative is a proper word for this tendency is irrelevant. The idea is clear and it is one that is fundamentally correct. Many wars and much violence are due to the good desires of people and not their bad. The immediate question, however, is whether there actually can be identified a need, sentiment, or temperament that has this integrative character.

Clearly, the protective need is such an "integrative" urge in us. This need involves³⁹ wanting to help the distressed (wherever they are), providing education for our children, ensuring life's necessities and comforts for our parents, and reducing the danger of death from accidents and disease for all. This need represents an outward concern with others, a wish to help and protect them--a humanitarianism.

No doubt this need is linked to the morality and imperatives of the superego and the doing-one's-duty aspect of the self-sentiment. It is from those sentiments that the self-righteousness or indignation associated with the expression of this need may arise.⁴⁰ Nonetheless, the integrated self in its striving for self-esteem does not directly subsidiate to this need, as we know from individuals who seem to have a totally self-centered lack of feeling for others. Although all people have this need, some clearly manifest it in different ways, if at all. We do know from history and literature, and from our own experience, however, that the protective need and our love for others--the integrative tendency in Koestler's terms⁴¹--plays a large enough role in enough lives to be a central force of humankind. Ideologies, party platforms, utopias, and political movements of all kinds derive their strength from it.

* Scanned from Chapter 22 in R.J. Rummel, The Dynamic Psychological Field, 1975. For full reference to the book and the list of its contents in hypertext, click book. Typographical errors have been corrected, clarifications added, and style updated.

1. This is not the place for technical details. Suffice to say that simple structure comprises a set of explicitly mathematically defined criteria maximizing a certain kind of parsimony. See my Applied Factor Analysis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970): 376 ff. For a summary of this book, see "Understanding Factor Analysis".

2. Technically, a different set of rotations might show that such a component actually exists in the data. On rotation, see "Understanding Factor Analysis".

3. Raymond Cattell, Personality and Motivation (Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book Co., 1957): 108.

4. See Rollo May, Power and Innocence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), and Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), who make much the same point.

5. David C. McClelland, The Achieving Society (New York: Van Nostrand, 1961).

6. Cattell, op. cit., p. 5 17.

7. Ibid., p. 100.

8. Ibid., p. 138.

9. Ibid., p. 100.

10. Ibid., p. 108.

11. Ibid., pp. 112-113.

12. T. W. Adorno, et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950).

13. Raymond Cattell, The Scientific Analysis of Personality (Baltimore: Penguin, 1965): 91. For Cattell's latest and most critical comments on the authoritarian personality, see his A New Morality from Science: Beyondism (New York: Pergamon Press, 1972): 66-67, n. 4.

14. This Cattell calls a "premsia versus harria" component. Cattell, Personality and Motivation, op. cit., p. 134.

15. This Cattell calls a "protension vs. inner relaxation" component. See ibid., p. 143.

16. The personality research of Eysenck (The Psychology of Politics, London: Routlege and Kegan-Paul, 1954) is similar to that of Cattell and differs mainly on the technical details of analysis (for example, rotation and number of factors). My own applied experience leads me to side with Cattell.

17. Cattell calls it a "premsia vs. harria" component. See Cattell, Personality and Motivation: 131-132, and especially p. 134. Also Cattell, The Scientific Analysis of Personality, op. cit., pp. 358-360.

18. Ibid., pp. 319-320.

19. Ibid., pp. 358-359; Cattell, Personality and Motivation, op. cit., pp. 280-281.

20. Ibid., p. 317; Cattell, The Scientific Analysis of Personality, op. cit., pp. 122-126. The concepts of introversion and extraversion were first developed by C. G. Jung, and played a prominent role in his theory of psychological types. See his Psychological Types, trans. H. G. Baynes (New York: Pantheon Books, 1923).

21. Cattell, The Scientific Analysis of Personality, p. 125.

22. Ibid., p. 516.

23. John L. Horn, "Motivation and Dynamic Calculus Concepts from Multivariate Experiment," in Cattell (ed.), Handbook of Multivariate Psychology (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966): 633.

24. Cattell, The Scientific Analysis of Personality, op. cit., p. 190.

25. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (London: Methuen, 1966).

26. Anthony Storr, Human Aggression (New York: Atheneum, 1968).

27. Cattell, Personality and Motivation, op. cit., p. 540.

28. It is this characteristic of extinction with gratification that enables researchers to discriminate between needs and temperament.

29. Ibid., p. 108.

30. Ibid., p. 109. The association of hypochondria with dominance "is either a dominating device or a consequence of the greater frustration of this pattern in women" (ibid.).

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., p. 110.

33. Ibid., p. 110.

34. Ibid., p. 111.

35. Ibid., p. 143.

36. Ibid., p. 144.

37. Ibid.

38. Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967).

39. Cattell, Personality and Motivation, op. cit., pp. 515-516.

40. Peter Lupsho, in "Explanation of Political Violences: Some Psychological Theories Versus Indignation," Politics and Society 2 (Fall, 1971): 89-104, makes the same point as Koestler, but terms the outward-directed concern indignation. Koestler stresses the need, Lupsho, an associated emotion.

41. Koestler believes that the integrative tendency is a need separate from one for self-assertion, which is in accord with the personality I have drawn here.

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