The conceptual complexity of Presidents Carter and Clinton: An automated content analysis of temporal stability and source bias

Previous work on the measurement of leaders' foreign policy orientations by Margaret G. Hermann argues that spontaneous utterances should provide more useful indications of stable personality characteristics than prepared sta tements. This paper reconsiders this question for Presidents Jimmy Carter a nd Bill Clinton through an automated coding system. A large number of spont aneous utterances and prepared statements by these presidents were compared in an effort to determine the stability of their conceptual complexity acr oss source types and over time. The findings support the ability of Hermann 's conceptual complexity measurement to capture robust differences between individuals; however, scores derived from spontaneous comments varied signi ficantly from those derived from prepared remarks. In addition, the trait a ppears to be stable for some subjects (Carter) but not for others (Clinton) .