Trump’s Personality In His Political Stance On Employment

From the moment Donald Trump officially entered the political arena,his"extreme" personality not only generated heated discussion among the public,but also aroused scholarly interests.However,most scholars who explore the relationship between Trump’s personality and his policy fix their focus on the foreign policies of the United States instead of domestic affairs.Nevertheless,as for Trump who chose"Make America Great Again”as the campaign slogan,the urgent need is to alleviate and solve the internal problems existing in the United States at that time,and the top priority of the important tasks is to improve the employment situation of the United States.Given the importance of employment policy to Trump and its representation of the political issues during Trump’s tenures,to delve into the relationship between Trump’s personality and his political stance on employment can deepen our general understanding of the influence of Trump’ personality on his political stance.Therefore,this thesis aims to answer the following research questions:1)Is Trump’s personality reflected in his political stance on employment?2)How is Trump’s personality(not)reflected in his political stance on employment?2a)If the answer is yes,to what extent and in which dimensions is his personality reflected in his political stance on employment?2b)If the answer is no,then what are the differences between his own personality and the personality reflected in his political stance on employment?In order to answer the research questions mentioned above,under the guidance of the Five-Factor Model of Personality,the study analyzes 79 vlogs posted by Trump between 2011 to 2014,and 11 vlogs and 81 interview excerpts mentioning employment from his announcement of candidacy to the end of his term with the help of LIWC(Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count).After calculation of the processed data,two personality profiles of Trump can be gotten:1)the personality profile based on the data produced by Trump from 2011 to 2014,which can represent the common personality of Trump under regular circumstances;2)the personality profile based on the data produced by Trump from 2015 to 2021,which reveals the personality reflected in Trump’s political stance on employment after he became a political figure.The data in each profile are further analyzed by t-tests for dependent means through SPSS.By doing so,the two profiles are compared with each other thoroughly by a quantitative research method.The analysis based on the above methods shows that three traits of Trump’s personality are reflected in his political stance on employment namely Extraversion,Neuroticism and Agreeableness;while two traits of his personality are of significant difference from those reflected in his political stance on employment namely Conscientiousness and Openness.Then,the thesis further concludes that Trump was consistently extremely assertive,energetic and adventurous(from the dimension of Extraversion),emotionally instable and temperamental(from the dimension of Neuroticism)and tended to be antagonistic and be skeptical of others(from the dimension of Agreeableness)no matter what position he takes,and these traits are all directly reflected in his political statements on employment issue.On the other hand,compared with himself before he became a political figure,influenced by the political system and responsibility that he had to take,Trump became more responsible and organized and demonstrated stronger motivation for achievement when expressing his political opinion on employment(from the dimension of Conscientiousness).Besides,Trump became more conservative than before when he talked about employment after he became a political leader(from the dimension of Openness).