Kay Phillips

Demythologizing an elite : American presidents in empirical, comparative, and historical perspective

Empirical Perspective: General Characteristics of American Presidents Comparative Perspective: Revolutionaries, Loyalists, and President: Comparative Patterns Revolutionaries, Loyalists, and Presidents: Discriminant Patterns Historical Perspective: Medical and Psychological Histories: Washington to Buchanan Medical and Psychological Histories: Lincoln to Hoover Medical and Psychological Histories: F. Roosevelt to Bush Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Index

Comparing Leaders: An Interactional Theory

This paper proposes an interactional theory to explain the rise of leaders by stressing the interplay between sociodemographic variables, psychological dynamics, and situational factors. The theory is applied to three large-scale empirical studies of revolutionary leaders, loyalist elites, and military personalities that reply on careful data collection and analysis. The theory is confirmed, as the findings demonstrate that the three elite groups share a large number of commonalities as well as some differences. Some leadership dynamics appear to be universal, oblivious to time, place, culture, national frontier, and the like.

Birth Order and Revolutionary Leadership

Finding ourselves in general accord with the thrust of Frederic Townsends meticulous and unsparing critique (this issue) of Frank Sulloways Born to Rebel (1996), we devote this commentary to an amplification of some of Townsends points.