How do leaders matter? What do leaders want? Grandiose narcissism provides a pathway to understanding how personality can impact a leader’s preference formation and foreign policy behavior. More narcissistic leaders will focus their efforts on maintaining their inflated self-image by selecting how they will fight on the world stage and who they will fight against. While most leaders will divert attention to easier won battles, more narcissistic leaders will prefer to fight against high-status states by themselves. This article introduces a new measure of US’ presidential narcissism, and finds support for the argument that more narcissistic US presidents prefer unilaterally initiating Great Power disputes using data from 1897–2008. A brief review of Theodore Roosevelt’s handling of the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 is used as a plausibility probe of the theory’s causal mechanisms.

中文翻译：

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全世界都是一个舞台：美国总统自恋与国际冲突

领导者有多重要？领导想要什么？宏大的自恋为理解个性如何影响领导者的偏好形成和外交政策行为提供了途径。更多自恋的领导人将通过选择他们将如何在世界舞台上战斗以及他们将与谁战斗来集中精力维护他们膨胀的自我形象。虽然大多数领导人会将注意力转移到更容易获胜的战斗上，但更自恋的领导人更愿意独自与地位高的国家作战。本文介绍了一种衡量美国总统自恋的新方法，并为更多自恋的美国总统更愿意使用 1897 年至 2008 年的数据单方面发起大国争端的论点提供支持。