Introduction Sara Ahmadian, & Delroy L. Paulhus University of British Columbia Predicting Success among Republican Candidates: Personality and Verbal Style Method We analyzed speeches of nine Republican presidential candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham & Mike Huckabee. Each candidate’s announcement speech and 2 other random speeches were chosen and transcribed leading to a total of 27 speeches. Three variables were of outmost importance to us: Media Presence, Narcissism and Formality. Formality: The speeches were run through LIWC [Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count] (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010).to look for linguistic markers of Formal Speech: They included informality, analytical thinking, words per sentence and words less than 6 letters. Narcissism: Speeches were coded by a blind coder on two criteria: derogation and boasting. In addition, we extracted the LIWC total of person pronouns (FPP). Media Presence: Each candidate’s twitter page was coded for ratio of followers/following, total number of tweets before announcement, total number of tweets after announcement, and number of tweets per year on Twitter. As outcome variables, we collected information on the number of primary contest won by each candidate to see if there was a relationship between media presence and contests won. Figure 1: As expected, t- test between Trump (M = -6.51, SD= 1.64) and other Republican candidates (M =.81, SD= 2.46) indicated that Trump’s speech incorporated a lower rate of formal linguistic attributes, t(25) = -4.99, p <.001. Figure 2: Trump (M = 5.24, SD=.25) used a higher rate of personal pronouns compared to other republican candidates (M = 2.7, SD= 1.53), t(25) = 2.83, p =.004. Figure 3: Trump (M =.72, SD=.59) scored significantly higher on narcissism compared to other republican candidates (M = -. 09, SD=.64), t(25) = 2.09, p =.02. Table 1: Correlations of media presence, narcissism and informality with number of states and territories won by each candidate. * p <.05 Candidate success (# states won) was predicted by narcissistic, informal speech, and social media presence. The fact that Donald Trump’s campaign style led in all 3 qualities may explain his popularity as a Republican candidate. His informal style of speaking may lead him to come across as more relatable to the public (Hirsh & Peterson, 2009). Supporting previous research on campaign speeches (Watts et al., 2013), Trump’s grandiose style may explain winning the popular vote among Republicans. Finally, our research confirmed Trump’s strong presence on social media. This advantage supports Lee & Shin (2012) in showing a positive link between politicians’ twitter activity and people’s intention to vote for them. Trump’s success may not be a puzzle after all. It appears that unlimited self- promotion is a winning style – at least among Republican voters. Watts, A. L., Lilienfeld, S. O., Smith, S. F., Miller, J. D., Campbell, W. K., Waldman, I. D.. Faschingbauer, T. J. (2013). The double-edged sword of grandiose narcissism: Implications for successful and unsuccessful leadership among U.S. presidents. Psychological Science, 24, Lee, E., & Shin, S. Y. (2012). Are they talking to me? cognitive and affective effects of interactivity in politicians' twitter communication. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 15, Hirsh, J. B., & Peterson, J. B. (2009). Personality and language use in self-narratives. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, Tausczik, Y. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29, Discussion Result References The success or failure of political candidates is determined by a small amount of information – often superficial - transmitted by media, primarily television Based on previous research, we considered three themes in analyzing the 2016 Republican candidates: 1. Narcissism: evidence suggests that narcissists make a good first impression 2. Informality: more casual candidates fare better than more formal ones 3. Social media presence: recent candidates have fared better if they make active use of social media. We hypothesized that all three variables would contribute to success in the Republican race The remarkable success of Donald Trump has baffled most political pundits We suspected his success can be traced to the three key factors noted above. We predict that he will surpass all candidates on these three variables. States & Territories Won Tweets over 4 month after announcement r =.70* Follower/following ratio on Twitter r =.88* Narcissism ratings from speeches r =.45 Boasting r =.59* Derogation r =.18 Informality r =.72*