Kamala Harris is the first African American woman and the first woman of South Asian descent to be nominated for vice president, not to mention the second African American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. She has already made history.
The day after her inauguration as a senator in 2016, Harris spoke at the Women’s March. Looking out into a sea of excited faces, she said, “Even if you’re not sitting in the White House, even if you’re not a member of the United States Congress, you have the power! And we the people have the power!”
In the vice presidential debate on October 5, Harris will face current Vice President Mike Pence.
But unlike Donald Trump, little has been said about Kamala Harris by mental health professionals. What is known about her character?
In her autobiography, Harris presents herself as a fighter and a speaker of truth to power. She describes her struggles against white supremacy, homophobia, and crime, not to mention the Trump administration. She describes her struggles for DACA, women’s rights, and human rights. Two of her most notable moments were her questioning of Attorney General William Barr in 2019, regarding the Mueller report and investigations, and her confrontation with candidate Joe Biden over his record on migrant removals in the 1970s.
Following her selection, an article about Harris’s choice as vice president said that she was, in theory, “a dynamite political talent.” But, as the Intelligencer put it, in practice she ran a “disappointing” presidential campaign, and her political skills and instincts may be questionable.
Meanwhile, sociologist Kate Choi reviewed the evidence on people with mixed racial identities (of which she is one). She noted the complexity of the issue, citing a Pew Research Center survey that showed that “only 60 percent of people of mixed racial ancestry identified as multiracial.”
She noted that Harris chose to identify primarily as African American. This was in part because her mother, who is South Asian, knew that “people would see her as an African American woman.” Harris, as Choi reminded readers, chose to attend a historically African-American university. Harris herself recalls that at Howard, “every sign was telling students that we could be anything, that we were young and talented and black, and that we shouldn’t let anything stand in the way of our success.”
Harris recalled that she “enthusiastically dove into Howard.”
According to Choi, the literature on self-identification among people of mixed heritage shows that identity can depend on social context. Multicultural people may report “different racial backgrounds at school and at home,” for example, and their self-identity may change over time.
Such research, Choi concludes, shows that complex individuals should not be pigeonholed into “a single racial category.”
In the world of personality assessment, psychologist Aubrey Immelman of the College of Saint Benedict has been researching and evaluating candidates for decades. Drawing on the work of Theodore Mellon, Immelman and his group developed a personality scale that used open sources and experimental assessments to rate the personality of major presidential candidates, “as they are perceived publicly.”
The assessment tool Immelman uses is not perfect. It relies on trained undergraduates, not seasoned clinicians, to select open sources and administer assessments. Its reliability among participants has not been well studied. When Immelman looks at Harris, he is a white man evaluating a woman of mixed heritage, a situation that is hardly ideal. There is an unresolved debate about the ethics of commenting from a distance. But Immelman’s experience and methodical approach allow him to compare political figures and attempt to predict how they will perform in office. He has successfully predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1996. His work is, to say the least, accurate, evidence-based, and thought-provoking.
What does Harris look like to Immelman?
In her pilot assessments, Harris scores high on the traits of “dominant,” “narcissistic/confident,” and “extroverted.” Immelman predicted this assertive, charismatic style last year, making Harris, along with Biden, one of the most electable candidates in the Democratic primary then. (Extroverted, dominant candidates often do better than engaged/disciplined candidates, who can have a harder time “reading” others and are less happy working the room.)
Biden, too, is extroverted, her assessments show. But he appears more adaptable or accommodating than Harris. How would the two fit in office?
In a recent email interview, Immelman told me that if elected vice president, Harris could outperform Biden. More ambitious than she is, she could “play a prominent role” in a Biden administration. Indeed, Immelman ventures to suggest that the “collaborative and loyal” Biden is better suited to be vice president than president.
What about the upcoming debate between Vice President Harris and Mike Pence? Immelman cautions that he had less information to work with in assessing Pence. But the vice president’s ratings show high marks for conscientiousness.
Immelman expects Pence’s biggest asset in the debate to be his “attention to detail” in articulating and supporting Trump’s positions.
A conscientious style can be useful in office, especially in the executive branch, Immelman said. But it’s not so useful on the campaign trail. A conscientious persona can come across as rigid, preachy, and even boring—a potential risk for the vice president on Oct. 5.
“I think Harris will have the edge,” Immelman told me. In his view, Harris’s gregarious personality, confidence, and commanding presence are likely to confuse the cautious Pence. That will be especially true if the debate is “freewheeling” and “less structured” in format.
Despite his findings, Immelman acknowledges some uncertainty. “The area that gives me pause the most is that Harris is ‘a bit lacking in ‘charisma’ — a flaw that is not apparent in Pence,” Immelman said. “Harris sometimes has a slightly unserious tone, even when addressing serious issues.” For Immelman, this creates a discrepancy between the content of what Harris says and the facial expressions and body language she uses when she says it.
Where can voters turn for clues to Harris’s style?
Thoughtful, long-form journalism has many advantages for the psychologically curious reader. The New York Times, for example, ran a front-page profile of Harris at the time of her selection in August 2020. The article’s point resonated with the points made by Choi and Immelman. Its title? “Kamala Harris, a Political Fighter Shaped by Living in Two Worlds.”
But until we can come up with a comprehensive, documented biography of Harris and a full study of her psychology (and it’s hard to imagine that both of those studies aren’t underway even as we speak), voters will have to make do with the data and predictions available now.
