Have peer-reviewed studies assessed Trump's personality using Big Five measures?
Executive summary
Yes — multiple peer‑reviewed papers have assessed Donald Trump’s personality with Big Five frameworks, using a range of approaches including expert surveys, crowdsourced lay ratings, nationally representative election surveys, and targeted studies of his supporters; those studies consistently treat the Big Five (OCEAN) as the organizing taxonomy but differ sharply in method and reliability [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. Peer‑reviewed evidence: who measured what and where
Systematic, peer‑reviewed work explicitly applying Big Five measures to Trump exists: Nai’s comparative study in Presidential Studies Quarterly used scholar surveys to rate Trump on Big Five scales as part of a broader Big Five + Dark Triad battery [1]; a 2018 Collabra paper crowdsourced Five‑Factor facet ratings from Clinton and Trump voters using a 30‑facet FFM approach [2]; scholars tracking public perceptions used the Big Five in multiple waves and published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research [3]; and political‑psychology work published in Political Psychology applied the Big Five to investigate the personalities of Trump’s most loyal supporters, including use of the ANES Big Five items [4].
2. Methods vary — expert ratings, crowdsourcing, representative surveys, and indirect markers
The literature is methodologically heterogeneous: some studies rely on third‑party expert judgments collected soon after elections (Nai et al.) to profile candidates on the NEO/NEO‑FFI or similar instruments [1], others used crowdsourced online samples to have citizens rate Trump on Five‑Factor facets [2], and broader public‑opinion work tracked perceived Big Five traits across MTurk samples over time [3]. Researchers studying followers measured respondents’ own Big Five scores to relate supporter personality to loyalty [4] [6]. Separate non‑questionnaire approaches have mined language (e.g., tweets) to infer Big Five proxies, but those are computational approximations rather than standard psychometric Big Five tests [7].
3. Consistent patterns — but interpret with caution
Across these peer‑reviewed pieces a consistent pattern emerges: many raters and studies depict low agreeableness and low conscientiousness alongside high extraversion and elevated indicators of malevolent traits when combined with Dark Triad measures [1] [8]. Studies of perceived personality also reveal strong partisan divergence — Democrats and Republicans report very different Big Five impressions of Trump, and public ratings are more polarized than expert or student raters [3] [8]. However, inter‑rater agreement is often low for specific Big Five facets when third‑party judgments are used, which limits confidence in fine‑grained claims and cautions against overinterpreting mean scores [8] [9].
4. What the peer‑reviewed record cannot settle alone
Peer‑reviewed work establishes that the Big Five framework has been applied repeatedly to Trump, but it cannot on its own produce a definitive clinical or "true" profile because most studies rely on observer ratings or indirect measures rather than a direct, standard self‑report inventory administered to the subject [1] [5]. Meta‑analyses or triangulation across methods strengthen inference, yet the literature itself warns readers about ideological bias in lay ratings and measurement limits of third‑party assessments [8] [5].
5. Bottom line and the debates that follow
The academic record answers the narrow question: yes — peer‑reviewed studies have assessed Trump with Big Five instruments or Big Five–based batteries, and they appear in venues including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Collabra, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and Political Psychology [1] [2] [3] [4]. Those papers report broadly similar directional impressions but differ in method and emphasize caveats about partisan perception effects and low inter‑rater reliability when outsiders rate political figures, which means findings are robust as patterns of reputation and perception but limited as direct psychometric proof [8] [9].