David G. Winter is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. He previously taught at Wesleyan University. Winter is a personality and social psychologist with special interest in the relationships between personality and social contexts (such as educational, social, and political institutions and social structure; history; and politics). His research has focused on human motives (especially power motivation), leadership, authoritarianism, and the psychological aspects of conflict escalation.

With David McClelland and Abigail Stewart, he authored A New Case for the Liberal Arts (Jossey-Bass, 1981), which developed a variety of measures of the effects of liberal education. He is also the author of The Power Motive, Motivating Economic Achievement (with D. C. McClelland), and Personality: Analysis and Interpretation of Lives, as well as numerous papers in psychological journals. He translated and edited Otto Rank’s The Don-Juan Legend. He is currently writing a book, Why War? Wanting, Perceiving, and Justifying Power.


Winter is a past president and councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology, and received the society’s Harold Lasswell Award for distinguished scientific contribution to the field. He also received the Henry Murray Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. At Michigan, he served for many years as chair of the Personality and Social Contexts Area of the Psychology Department, and was interim director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Organizational Studies.