Top leaders must be tested
Brain and psychological research provides objective and reliable criteria
Introduction:
There are strong reasons to to test top leaders, because common disturbances can make a person outright dangerous as a top leader.
Brain research and psychology have developed reliable means, both for detecting disturbances that make a person outright unsuitable, as well for detecting signs of good suitability. This is especially important, as severe unsuitability is not always very obvious. Likewise, it takes advanced testing to reliably detect signs of especially great suitability.
Two major patterns of behavior
It has been established that there are two major patterns of human behavior:
- Unstable, impulsive, aggressive, irresponsible and unempathic survival-oriented behavior (SOB).
- Balanced, friendly, responsible, positive and empathic behavior (below I will call it BalancedEmpathicBehavior – BEB).
Moreover, the SOB is associated with deficient intellectual functioning causing weak judgment and foresight. An important weakness, associated with SOB, is the presence of psychological defence mechanisms. These are “psychological blinders” that limit or distort perception when the situation is experienced as threatening. So people with SOB have significant difficulties in assessing a stressful situation in a realistic way.
In BEB, on the other hand, the perception and assessment of stressful situations is realistic and clear with no “blinders”.
The patterns are confirmed by Brain research
Already, over 50 years ago, the great psychlologist, Abraham Maslow saw the BEB pattern and called such people self-actualized, representing the highest level of human development. However, his fellow scientists questioned his ideas. But in the last few decades, the self-actualized behavior pattern has been corroborated by brain research using the PET-scanning, Magneto-encephalograpy and other methods to investigate the brain.
This research has confirmed that the brain has two major styles of working.
1. Survival oriented behavior. It is activated by a sense of threat and elicits the stress response, which immediately switches on primitive survival centers in the midbrain. An important discovery is that this causes a suppression of higher brain centers, where the intellectual and creative resources are seated. Emotionally insecurity (weak basic trust) predisposes for this behavior. This insecurity is often not apparent other than under stressful conditions. .
2. Balanced empathic behavior (BEB). It is activated when the person feels secure. It is orchestrated by the forebrain which integrates the function of the whole brain cortex and optimizes its functioning so that the person can make full use of his intellectual and creative resources. This ensures clear thinking and an excellent judgment. Self-confidence and emotional security is a basic precondition for this pattern to predominate. For more, see Appendix 2.
Experts in human development estimate that at most a few percent of the population have achieved a significant degree of BEB today. Yet, it is evident that the president should be a BEB type, as they have qualities that make them greatly superior to SOB people and, also because SOB predisposes for outright dangerous, impulsive behavior, and bad judgment, especially in stressful situations.
Objective assessment
It is possible to objectively assess the degree of survival-orientation as well as BEB through an analysis of the brain physiology, especially the level of integration and socalled prefrontal brain dominance, and with reliable psychological tests, including field independence testing (measures the maturity of brain functioning) and detection of dangerous “psychological blinders”, the defence mechanisms.
Actually, a test for selecting Air Force pilots, the “Defence Mechanism Test” (DMT), is designed to detect these. It was developed by the Swedish Airforce, because defence mechanisms are a major reason for crashes, as it makes the person ignore or distort reality under pressure, for example ignoring a blinking red lamp or thinking it is in reality green. In Sweden, the frequency of Air Force flight crashes became almost zero after the introduction of this test.
Because of its reliability and effectiveness, it is now used for pilot selection in several countries. DMT is also being used for selecting top managers. It is obvious that using it for selecting “crash safe” presidents would benefit the Nation greatly.
It is important to note that people can behave completely normally and yet have strong abnormal psychological defence mechanisms impairing their judgment seriously under stress.
Signs you can recognize
It is possible even for the layman to roughly identify proneness for survival orientation from the behavior and statements as seen and reported in the media.
Signs of Survival-Oriented Behavior (SOB):
Let us list some scientifically established signs of SOB that can be verified from public records and media.
- Impulsive, difficulty in controlling impulses and outbursts of anger.
- Aggressive. Not only in direct behavior, but also in attitudes to violence, like the preference for using arms and wars for solving conflicts.
- Strong egoism. Puts ones own needs above those of everybody else including even the closest ones. From this follows:
- Irresponsibility, ruthlessness in pronounced cases of SOB.
- Greediness is a common consequence of the extreme need for security along with egotism.
- Low moral standards. E.g. does not hesitate to use lies to promote his interests.
- Weak integrity, changing convictions and opinions opportunistically, even in key issues.
- Weak empathy – insensitive to the suffering of people. Does not care much about the suffering and problems of poor and sick people.
- Weak judgment, with inclination to disregard or belittle important problems (this indicates the presence of reality-distorting psychological defence mechanisms).
- Insecurity – need for predictability. In situations that they cannot master, they experience much increased anxiety and considerably impaired thinking due to suppression of the forebrain. Inability to act intelligently and coherently under the stress of unprepared TV appearances may serve as an indicator of SOB.
- Greed for power – from micro (family) to macro scale because it makes them feel more secure.
- Intolerance. People that are unfamiliar in appearance or behavior are experienced as unpredictable and unconsiously arouse anxiety, which can calls forth aggressive attitudes against them. Ethnic and religious intolerance are expressions of this weakness.
For more about Survival-Oriented-Behavior, see For more, see Appendix 1.
It is evident that a person with SOB is definitely unsuitable, and may even be dangerous as a president.
Therefore, every citizen should learn to recognize the signs above. Please note that it is a pattern of related elements, so even a few of these signs give reason to suspect the presence of all the other signs. Some SOB people are however skilled in consciously or unconsciously hiding this weakness especially when they feel secure. Even if so, their SOB may be revealed from weak intellectual performance under stress, like in unprepared media interviews.
There is a specific variety of SOB. It is called the authoritarian personality type, see “ The most problematic disturbance”. It seems to be the expression of especially pronounced, chronical SOB.
Signs of Balanced Empathic Behavior (BEB):
They are the straight opposite to SOB at every point:
- Mental stability, calmness, “coolness” even under pressure,
- Friendliness – does not use aggression as a means of solving issues.
- Responsible, considerate.
- Altruistic (un-egoistic).
- High moral standards, trustworthy, avoids lies for achieving his goals.
- Strong integrity, holds on to his convictions even under pressure.
- Strong empathy. “Good heart” – cares for the suffering and difficulties of unfortunate.
- Excellent judgment and clarity of mind, with a superior ability to realistically perceive all relevant aspects of a problem.
- Inner security – can handle the unexpected. BEB persons are fundamentally secure and take unpredictable situations as stimulating challenges without any impairment of mental performance because there will be no interference from the survival centres.
- Tolerance. Positively accepts people of other races and cultures, however unfamiliar and “unpredictable” they are, and finds it interesting and stimulating to interact with them.
The suitability of the president candidates must be assessed scientifically
It is absurd that United States, the most creative and technologically advanced country in the world, holds on to the outdated and unreliable method of selecting the president only on the basis of his ability to raise money, to make a good impression in the media and to debate well.
Of course, the presidential campaign should remain, but what I mean is that the presidential candidates must have passed tests for suitability focused on detecting survival-oriented-behavior and its opposite, and the test results must be made available publicly.
This is especially important now that the country faces an extremely serious economic crisis that requires a high level of intelligence, creativity and an excellent judgment enabling the president to assess and handle the very complex economic situation in a realistic and constructive way.
Yes, the present primitive way of selecting a president is worse than absurd, it is irresponsible due to the unstable world situation with several countries possessing weapons of mass destruction. In such a situation it is evident that it is of vital importance to exclude any candidate with significant indications of being prone to survival-oriented behavior that incapacitates his ability to make balanced and intelligent decisions and predisposes for aggressive and emotionally unstable behavior that might unnecessarily precipitate a major devastating nuclear war.
Appendix 1
Survival-Oriented-Behavior (SOB) = Stressful behavior
A more common name for SOB is stressful behavior which is exactly the same thing. I am using SOB because:
1. It gives an idea of its cause, which is the conscious or subconscious feeling of being threatened. Even just a feeling of being insecure is sufficient to evoke a tendency for SOB.
2. It gives an idea of its nature. It is a primitive defence response with the purpose of maximally enabling survival.
3. Recent research has found that people may even have high levels of stress hormones in the blood and still they can be totally unaware of being stressed. So SOB can appear without any subjective experience of stress.
Symptoms
The symptoms of stressful behavior have been mapped very extensively and we have listed some of the most common ones above under “signs of SOB”.
It is basically a primitive, instinctive behavioral pattern that is orchestrated from the midbrain survival centers. Its key theme is survival at any cost. This makes the person ruthless, careless, egoistic, and in severe cases, unempathic, only pursuing his own short-sighted instinct to survive, which in civil society can appear as a strong need for self-assertion. Even if the sense of being threatened is internal (so called trait-anxiety), the person acts subconsciously in the same way as if there existed some external danger.
In persons with chronic SOB, this colors their behavior and attitudes. One variety of this is the authoritarian personality pattern, se my article “The Authoritarian Personality Type – a variety of Survival-Oriented Behavior (SOB)”.
Suppression of higher brain centres
It has been well established that SOB brings about a suppression of higher brain centres responsible for intelligent, creative, foresightful, caring, responsible and empathic behavior. This is because, in a dangerous situation, the action must be instinctive and instantaneous. There is no time for the pondering and reflections associated with intelligent behavior.
The suppression of the “intelligence centers” of the brain explains the common experience that people loose their capacity to think clearly and intelligently in stressful situations. If the person performs far below his normal intellectual level in a stressful situation, it is a strong indication of significant SOB-proneness. Considering that a president often is exposed to heavy stress and has to make rapid decisions under such circumstances, a SOB-prone person is highly unsuitable.
Reality-distorting defence mechanisms
Another problematic aspect of people with proneness for SOB is the readiness to use defence mechanisms. Their purpose is to suppress uncomfortable information that increases the anxiety level. Such subconscious reality-distorting mechanism are suppression, distortion, belittling and reinterpretation.
It is obvious that a person with such a disturbance may commit severe errors of judgment, which may be aggravated by their impulsiveness and aggressiveness.
Insecure personality – seeking predictability
The key reason for SOB is insecurity, or weak Emotional Basic Trust (EBT), which colors the perception of life. When a person feels basically insecure, he is prone to perceive ordinary life situations as anxiety-provoking, which triggers SOB.
Weak EBT (WEBT) develops when life conditions create feelings of fear and insecurity in childhood. Insecure parents with the instability, irritability and aggressiveness that is evoked by stress, are not able, even with the best intentions, to create the atmosphere of security required for developing strong EBT. Weak EBT may also be caused by specific traumas like war experiences, early loss of a parent, early separation from parents, divorce and abuse.
The strong sense of inner insecurity due to WEBT causes a great need for predictability and security in life, because this reduces the intensity of SOB and the associated painful anxiety. The person gets nervous or panicks in unprepared situations while behaving apparently normally when he senses that the situation is under control.
This is why The “Authoritarian personality type”, a variety of SOB, aims, to a significant extent, at increasing their feeling of security by increasing the predictability of their situation. See “The Authoritarian personality type.”
Appendix 2
Balanced Empathic Behavior (BEB)
This is the opposite to SOB in every respect. It appears when the higher brain centers in the cerebral cortex are not suppressed by the midbrain survival centers. It can only occur when the person feels secure.
Our modern civilized life makes it difficult to develop the strong inner security, so-called Emotional Basic Trust (EBT), that enables a person to always feel secure. Therefore very few, possibly less than one percent of the population have a significant level of EBT.
Such a person has the clarity of mind, the good judgment, absence of defence mechanisms and mental stability enabling him to make really good decisions even under severe stress.
This is especially important in these days when the president will be exposed to extreme stress due to the severe economical situation in the US. Therefore he must be able to act in a calm and well balanced way with full access to his intellectual and creative capacity even under the great stress of presidential work.
