Reconsidering the Link Between Self-Reported Personality Traits and Political Preferences

Bert N Bakker,Yphtach Lelkes,Ariel Malka

doi:10.1017/s0003055421000605

Abstract

Research on personality and political preferences generally assumes unidirectional causal influence of the former on the latter. However, there are reasons to believe that citizens might adopt what they perceive as politically congruent psychological attributes, or at least be motivated to view themselves as having these attributes. We test this hypothesis in a series of studies. Results of preregistered panel analyses in three countries suggest reciprocal causal influences between self-reported personality traits and political preferences. In two two-wave survey experiments, a subtle political prime at the beginning of a survey resulted in self-reported personality traits that were more aligned with political preferences gauged in a previous assessment. We discuss how concurrent assessment within the context of a political survey might overestimate the causal influence of personality traits on political preferences and how political polarization might be exacerbated by political opponents adopting different personality characteristics or self-perceptions thereof.

Highlights

Studies in this area have mainly used cross-sectional designs in which personality traits and political preferences are measured within the same political survey
Dispositional authoritarianism—a widely studied trait reflecting variation in preference for obedience, conformity, and order—has tended to correlate positively with certain right-wing political preferences (Feldman and Stenner 1997; Stenner 2005). This association between right versus left political preferences and traits such as conscientiousness, openness, and authoritarianism suggests that the primary dimension of political conflict is psychologically deep-seated and, difficult to mitigate through mutual understanding and compromise (Hibbing, Smith, and Alford 2014)
Though this work varies a great deal in terms of the personality attributes assessed and the theoretical frameworks guiding hypothesis tests, a key conclusion of much of this work is that political differences between the right and the left are caused, to an important degree, by a family of personality differences related to an open versus closed orientation to behavior and experience

Summary

Results

We present the unconstrained cross-lagged regression coefficients. The RMSEA for all models was 0.07, the CFI was 0.98, and the SRMR was 0.03, which is. We created a general right versus left ideology composite to test our preregistered hypotheses, consisting of the measures of partisanship, presidential approval, liberal-conservative self-placement, and social and economic policy preferences We scaled this variable to range from 0 to 1, with higher scores meaning a more conservative position. In wave 1 of the Authoritarianism experiment, respondents completed measures of party identification and ideological self-placement, which were combined into a symbolic political preference measure that ranged from 0 to 1 and with higher scores meaning more conservative (see OA 6.1 for item wording and coding). Turning to the authoritarianism experiment, we found that the association between the pretreatment right-wing political preference measures and authoritarianism were stronger in the political prime condition than in the placebo control condition (Figure 6) This difference was only statistically significant at our preregistered threshold for ideological self-placement (β = 0.06, SE = 0.03, one-sided p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

CONFLICT OF INTEREST