Channels of participation: Political participant types and personality.

David Johann,Markus Steinbrecher,Kathrin Thomas,Frantisek Sudzina

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240671

Abstract

This article employs a person-centred approach to test the relationship between personality traits and empirically defined political participant types. We argue that it is more appropriate to focus on types of participants to test the relationship between personality and political participation than on individual modes or latent dimensions of political participation. Our reasoning is that the person-centred approach allows us to learn more about how and why citizens combine different modes of participation from a tool kit of available political activities to achieve a goal as a function of their personality. We rely on data collected by the German Longitudinal Election Study 2017 (GLES, ZA6801). On the basis of a set of survey questions enquiring on political activities that people take part in, Latent Class Analysis allows us to identify three political participant types (inactives, voting specialists, and complete activists). The 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10) measures respondents’ personality traits. Our findings suggest that conscientious people are more likely to affiliate with the voting specialists and extroverts with the more active participant types in Germany.

Highlights

An extensive and increasing body of literature studies the way in which citizens engage in politics and what might explain differences in their participatory patterns [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
While a majority of these studies focus on individual modes of participation, such as voting, attending demonstrations, or signing petitions, more recent research has emphasised the need to re-consider the ways in which we think about political engagement suggesting to empirically identify either activity- or person-centred classifications: The activity-centred perspective views participation in different dimensions of activity types
To shed light on how the person-centred perspective differs from investigating individual modes of participation or employing an activity-centred approach and why it is important to study participation in this way, we borrow from the environmental awareness literature: At the individual level, environmental awareness can be measured with numerous indicators, such as usage of public transportation

Summary

Introduction

An extensive and increasing body of literature studies the way in which citizens engage in politics and what might explain differences in their participatory patterns [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. To shed light on how the person-centred perspective differs from investigating individual modes of participation or employing an activity-centred approach and why it is important to study participation in this way, we borrow from the environmental awareness literature: At the individual level, environmental awareness can be measured with numerous indicators, such as usage of public transportation. It might be desirable to investigate a broader question focusing on the choice of means of transportation for environmental reasons and how gender, age, and personality traits are related to this latent dimensions This activity-centred perspective allows answering whether and how different latent dimensions of activities are used. We close with a discussion of our results and conclusion outlining the implications for future research

Political participant types and personality

Data and methods

Political participant types in Germany

Political participant types and personality in Germany

Findings

Discussion and conclusion