KATE ZERNIKE
ESSAY


Learning to be cool while leading with emotion is a balancing act for politicians like Barack Obama


THE ECONOMY JOLTS and stumbles, wars slog on in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the horrors of a new terrorist attack blanket the news and draw frayed attention yet again to precarious alliances around the world. The watchword for the holidays is subdued; certainly not much inspires celebration.

Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that to lead in crisis, Americans elected a man repeatedly recognized for his uncommon calmness. More than ever, the voters seemed to say - among other things - that they crave stability, a steady hand, the reassuring face on television.

Sometimes, such equilibrium can seem superhuman, but it is not entirely the gift of the chosen few. It can be cultivated .

So how to achieve a calm temperament without a steady diet of beta blockers and Xanax?

Calm, per se, does not appear in the vocabulary of those who study personality and temperament. People who seem “calm’’ are classified as low on the scale of neuroticism.

How much neuroticism anyone gets is determined largely by genetics. But it is also within a person’s control. Psychiatrists and psychologists talk about emotional regulation - the ability to manage neuroticism so that even the most nervous of people can go through life appearing and feeling more in control than those genetically predisposed to calmness.

“What studies have shown us is that there’s great plasticity, even though people are genetically built in ways that make them respond anxiously or not,” said James J.Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of its psychophysiology laboratory. “Genetically identical people can give very different outward impressions because they think differently, they regulate their emotions differently.”

It’s relatively easy to say how outgoing someone is, or how verbal. Those who study personality caution that it’s harder to know how calm someone really is behind the facade - several noted that

President-elect Barack Obama has had trouble kicking smoking, perhaps hinting at some compulsion beneath the cool.

And for all its benefits, coolness can have its drawbacks.

“No two people’s calmness functions the same for them,” said John D.Mayer, a professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire and one of the original theorists on the concept of emotional intelligence.“The calmness of an airline pilot is really functional and helpful. The calmness of a teacher could be misinterpreted as a lack of caring. It’s going to depend on how they integrate that personality attribute with their goals and desires and hopes and functioning.”

Researchers estimate that about half the variation in personalities reflects genetic makeup, based on studies comparing, say, adopted siblings .

The rest is shaped by environment, though how is harder to know. Birth order may have something to do with it, as did where a person grew up.

In Mr. Obama’s case, his wife has said that Hawaii is the key to understanding his seemingly laid-back personality.

Franklin D.Roosevelt, whose calmness is often recalled in discussing Mr. Obama, may have gotten it from his parents. According to Jonathan Alter’s account in “The Defining Moment,” when the family was aboard the ocean liner Germania as it plunged beneath a giant wave, F.D.R.’s father remarked coolly, “We seem to be going down.” His mother took her fur and nestled 3-yearold Franklin into it: “Poor little boy, if he must go down, he’s going down warm.”

But many researchers argue for two ways to think about calmness: a person is calm, or learns to be.

Imagine two people with equally high measures of neuroticism dealing with the same irascible boss. One gets yelled at and leaves the boss’s office composed; the other gets yelled at and flees to the bathroom in tears or storms out. The difference is that the first person has learned to regulate the neuroticism.

But while there is some evidence that complex tasks benefit from calmness, that’s not to say it’s everything.

When the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, finally appeared on television before his shaken country 18 hours after the attacks began in Mumbai, Indians criticized him for being too temperate, not emotional enough.

David Winter, a psychologist at the University of Michigan who has analyzed the personalities of world leaders, said, “I’m not sure I know of evidence that higher degrees of stability are conducive to better leadership.”Winston Churchill, he noted, was highly emotional. Calvin Coolidge was calm to the point of phlegmatic. And F.D.R. could be cool to the point of remote.

It is a balancing act - to lead, but also to be human.“If there isn’t a tear after a grandmother who raised you just died, if there isn’t a flash of anger against perpetrators or the anxiety that people feel as they lose their jobs, there’s not the sense of connection, that this is a real person,” said Professor Gross.

“What we want from a leader is a paradoxical mix, having the emotions we feel, but almost being our better self.”