A follow-up analysis: Has Trump’s personality changed

Trump’s RNC speech revealed a strikingly different person from what has been seen in dozens of interviews, debates, and earlier speeches. Has his personality changed or something else? Fortunately, we already have analyzed an ABC News interview with Trump with George Stephanopoulos, 10 days after the convention. Trump’s personality has returned!  He is back to being highly optimistic (67), low in belief certainty (7%), and low in power orientation (2.3).   

What explains the personality that came out in his highly visible acceptance speech? Interestingly, Slate and the Wall Street Journal has reported that Stephen Miller wrote his speech. In an analysis of a June 2, 2016 CNN interview with Stephen Miller, we were able to get a respectable speech sample. Interestingly, Miller’s tone (36) was almost identical to the speech.  Similarly, he has one of the highest belief certainty scores (98) of any politician from the debates and convention. On the other hand, Miller used power words at about half the rate as Trump during his acceptance speech. However, the striking similarities between Miller’s interview and Trump’s acceptance speech could simply reflect Trump’s reliance on Miller as his speechwriter.