Growing evidence suggests that the general personality structure predisposes the political or ideological orientation. Here, we first replicated findings of associations between Big Five factors openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, and self-reported political orientation in a large German sample. However, the new aspect of our study is the addition of Wahl-O-Mat (WoM; a prominent voting advice application) as a measure of concrete policy-positions. Here, a score of accordance between a participant’s and the several German parties’ stances on current and relevant policy-issues is computed. Given that political science identifies trends towards a dealignment of voters with political parties and a decreasing significance of socio-structural factors, an issue-based approach to vote choice may become critical in the future. Therefore, we investigated whether personality’s influence on political orientation also extends to stances about specific issues and, thus, is not restricted to self-placements. As expected, WoM-scores also showed meaningful correlations with personality traits: accordance with right-of-center-parties is negatively related to openness and agreeableness and positively related to conscientiousness. Finally, we recruited smaller samples in the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, Australia, and Bulgaria and showed that the associations mentioned above are cross-nationally replicable. We conclude that personality influences not only self-perceived political identity but also attitudes towards current issues of political controversy. In both cases, the effects of personality were mediated by Right-Wing-Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation.
Recent and unforeseen developments in international politics renewed scientific interest in the intra- and extrapersonal factors influencing political decision making in democratically constituted states. While traditional Rational-Choice-Approaches (e.g.,
This is clearly at odds with psychological attempts to explain individual differences in political orientation. From
There is a vivid discussion on the question of how political ideology is defined. In the following, we adopt the definition of Tedin, stating that "political ideology is (…) an interrelated set of attitudes and values about the proper goals of society and how they should be achieved" (
These core differences between proponents of conservative vs. liberal political orientations can be traced back to differing motivational forces, referred to as Right-Wing-Authoritarianism (RWA;
SDO, on the other hand, refers to whether one prefers intergroup relationships to be more hierarchical or more equal. The SDO-scale seems to tap different clusters of Adorno's original theory, especially the need for maintenance of power, destructiveness, cynicism, and anti-intraception (
There are different answers to the question of whether RWA and SDO represent personality traits or attitudes. As both show higher correlations with measures of attitudes and values than with established instruments assessing the Big Five,
Given that social conformity corresponds to a combination of low openness and high conscientiousness in Big Five terms, while tough-mindedness equals the negative pole of agreeableness (
Measures of PO | Openness | Conscientiousness | Extraversion | Agreeableness | Neuroticism |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Self-Placement (liberal-conservative) | -.18* | .10* | -.01 | -.02 | -.03 |
1. Self-Placement (right-left) | .04* | .03* | .02* | .02* | .02* |
2. Economic attitudes (2 items) | -.01 | -.02* | -.01 | .01 | .03* |
3. Social attitudes (2 items) | .02* | -.08* | .03* | -.02* | .02* |
1. Economic Ideology (2 items; liberal-conservative) | -.04 | .24* | -.03 | -.51* | -.28* |
2. Social Ideology (7 items; liberal-conservative) | -.58* | .15* | .13* | -.26* | .07* |
1. Economic Ideology (1 Item; liberal-conservative) | -.02 | .13* | .07 | -.13* | -.13* |
2. Social Ideology (5 items; liberal-conservative) | -.29* | .13* | .08* | .01 | .09 |
1. Economic Ideology (2 items; liberal-conservative) | .21* | .14* | .09* | -.06 | -.07* |
2. Social Ideology (3 items; liberal-conservative) | -.24* | .05 | .02 | .04 | .00 |
1. Self-Placement (Right-Left) | .17* | -.09* | -.03* | .07* | .04* |
1. Self-Placement (liberal-conservative) | -.07* | .06* | .01 | -.04* | -.04* |
*
In line with the dual-process model, newer studies found agreeableness to be the second significant predictor of the latter, predicting support for social justice and policies of redistribution (
For the missing two traits of the Big Five, the evidence is less conclusive. Extraversion seems to be widely unrelated to political orientation, while neuroticism seemingly exerts some influence on specific political attitudes while leaving direct self-ratings of political orientation widely unaffected. An overview of recent studies on the relationship between personality and political orientation is given in
In light of this impressive and (at least partially) consistent body of research, what is the advantage of our study? Most crucially, most studies relied on a single-item for measuring political orientation. Those that distinguish between several dimensions of political orientation represent the exception to the rule and rely on a rather minimal number of items for each dimension. It is imperative to mention that the unidimensional conceptualization of political orientation has been criticized sharply. Two- and multidimensional concepts have been proposed to distinguish between distinct dimensions, for example,
Nevertheless, the dimensions have repeatedly been shown to be not independent of each other (
Furthermore, self-reports implicitly assume a consistent comprehension of the labels
Below, we present four additional and more specific arguments for using VAAs in research on the link between personality and political orientation. The basic functionality of VAAs is simple: They compare voters’ policy positions with those of parties or candidates and calculate scores of accordance (
The empirical argument: Political science identifies trends towards "dealignment" and an increase of floating voters throughout Europe (
The normative argument: Citizens who engage in searching for information about political issues and compare their stances to those of parties or candidates represent the ideal voter in normative theories of democracy.
Knowing to which extent personality influences VAA results is of value on its own. Carefully constructed VAAs have been shown to yield a multitude of positive effects. Most importantly, a substantial share of VAAs users indicates that the VAA influenced their vote choice (
Using VAAs in respective research projects will inform us of how ecologically valid assumptions about the influence of personality on political orientation are. Does personality only predict self-placements in abstract terms, or can preferences regarding particular political issues be derived from these often-shown associations? Empirical studies point to an interesting paradox: While citizens are generally able to place themselves and major parties on a broad left-right or liberal-conservative scale, they have little political knowledge of specific positions. However, these are relatively easy to deduce from the parties’ ideological positions (
To sum up, examining personality’s influence on VAA outcomes represents a promising approach because it informs us about (a) how personality will affect political outcomes in the possibly more issue-oriented future, (b) how strong personality’s influence on political outcomes would be in ideal democratic systems (c) how political campaigns may enhance micro-targeting techniques and possibly even how we can protect ourselves and (d) how ecologically valid findings on the association between personality and political outcomes actually are and probably will be in future.
So, in the present study, we first try to replicate findings from various countries concerning the relationship between the self-assessed political orientation and broad personality traits in a German sample. We hypothesize that conscientiousness should be positively and openness and agreeableness negatively related to conservative political orientations. Second, we examine whether these relationships hold, when political orientation is not assessed by direct self-report, but by the WoM as a prominent and prototypical example of VAAs. We tested for mediational effects of RWA and SDO on these relationships, as proposed by the dual-process model. Finally, to test for the stability of our results across national contexts, all hypotheses were tested in six further samples from the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Australia. Comparing the effect sizes across nations, we expected them to vary rather slightly, suggesting that the influence of personality on political orientation is a stable phenomenon.
Data from 1891 participants were assessed, comprised of the following samples: Germany (
All instruments described in the following were presented in a web-based format to all participants, who were recruited via online and offline advertisements. The samples used are not representative of the respective countries but represent convenience samples. Because participants were primarily recruited from universities in the respective countries, substantial restrictions of variance in educational levels, age, gender, and political orientation need to be taken into account, which representing a permanent problem in psychological science.
We administered the NEO-Five-Factor-Inventory (NEO-FFI;
RWA was assessed using a shortened form, the
SDO was assessed by the original SDO-scale (
The
To create an additional, concise WoM-score, we referred to the results of
Participants were asked to indicate their political orientation on a scale with a seven-point Likert-scale ranging from
Where necessary, the items of all instruments were translated by a professional interpreter or a native speaker and subsequently retranslated by independent native speakers. Retranslations were compared to the original items and modified then. In international samples, any references to Germany in the WoM-items were removed. Participants were instructed to answer the items as if the country they were living in was affected.
After inspecting the questionnaire-measures for reliability (Cronbach’s α), the mutual relationships between political self-placements, NEO-scales, the WoM-accordance-scores per party, and the WoM-total-scores, were investigated using Pearson’s correlation coefficients and hierarchical regression analyses. Mediational analyses were applied to test for possible mediations of the Big Five trait’s effect on political variables by RWA and SDO. As a measure of mediational effect size, completely standardized indirect effects are reported, supplemented by confidence intervals obtained from bootstrapping analyses (
Age and gender-distributions of all samples are presented in
Sample | male (%) | female (%) | Age |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Germany | 1219 | 37.2 | 62.8 | 29.82 (12.04) |
United States | 156 | 36.5 | 63.5 | 25.15 (8.88) |
Bulgaria | 70 | 48.6 | 51.4 | 31.37 (9.77) |
Spain | 108 | 29.6 | 70.4 | 25.02 (9.23) |
Turkey | 74 | 44.6 | 55.4 | 28.15 (10.93) |
Denmark | 132 | 67.4 | 32.6 | 27.88 (8.90) |
Australia | 77 | 48.1 | 50.6 | 35.97 (15.40) |
Sweden | 55 | 40.0 | 60.0 | 29.42 (10.68) |
Variable | α | ||
---|---|---|---|
NEO-FFI, |
|||
Neuroticism*** (***) | 2.82 (2.77) | 0.71 (0.69) | .88 (.88) |
Extraversion*** (***) | 3.24 (3.25) | 0.56 (0.55) | .81 (.82) |
Opennessn.s. (n.s.) | 3.64 (3.61) | 0.55 (0.54) | .77 (.77) |
Agreeableness*** (***) | 3.64 (3.66) | 0.50 (0.49) | .76 (.79) |
Conscientiousness*** (***) | 3.62 (3.66) | 0.58 (0.57) | .85 (.85) |
RWA, |
|||
Totaln.s. (n.s.) | 15.73 (15.87) | 4.08 (4.00) | .71 (.73) |
SDO, |
|||
Total*** (***) | 2.54 (2.59) | 1.06 (0.99) | .92 (.92) |
WoM2013, |
|||
Total*** (***) | -54.69 (-54.94) | 12.91 (13.05) | - |
Accordance with… | |||
CDU/CSU*** (*) | 43.78 (45.98) | 10.01 (10.15) | - |
SPD*** (***) | 62.39 (63.91) | 8.37 (7.96) | - |
FDP*** (n.s.) | 50.19 (51.73) | 8.69 (8.74) | - |
Die Grünen*** (*) | 66.48 (67.10) | 10.94 (11.28) | - |
Die Linke*** (***) | 67.56 (67.71) | 12.33 (12.61) | - |
AfD*** (***) | 45.32 (46.67) | 10.19 (10.25) | - |
Self-Placement, |
|||
Left-Right** (n.s.) | 3.26 (3.25) | 1.26 (1.09) | - |
Gender difference significant at *
Analyses of gender effects on political and NEO-variables are presented in detail in
Age correlated significantly, albeit negligibly, with self-placement (
As expected, significant results were obtained for the relationships between openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness on the one side and the political self-placement on the other. See
Correlations between… | Germany | United States | Bulgaria | Spain | Turkey | Denmark | Australia | Sweden |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Self-Placement and… | ||||||||
Openness | -.30*** | -.34*** (0.52) | -.14 (-1.37) | -.26** (-0.40) | -.27* (-0.21) | -.13 (-2.00*) | -.33** (0.30) | -.29* (-0.07) |
Agreeableness | -.20*** | -.20* (-0.04) | -.14 (-.50) | -.34*** (1.50) | -.47*** (2.48**) | -.13 (-0.75) | -.25* (0.45) | -.34* (1.05) |
Conscientiousness | .18*** | .20* (-0.22) | .02 (1.27) | .01 (1.64*) | -.15 (2.70**) | -.04 (2.42**) | .05 (1.07) | .14 (0.30) |
WoM-Total and… | ||||||||
Openness | -.34*** | -.35*** (0.12) | -.04 (-2.48**) | -.39*** (0.58) | -.46*** (1.19) | -.26** (-0.87) | -.30** (-0.32) | -.07 (-1.97*) |
Agreeableness | -.32*** | -.23** (-1.05) | -.29* (-0.21) | -.43*** (1.35) | -.32** (0.03) | -.31*** (-0.08) | -.35** (0.35) | -.26 (-0.46) |
Conscientiousness | .17*** | .23** (-1.24) | -.26* (3.44***) | .16 (0.08) | -.11 (2.34**) | .01 (1.70*) | .03 (1.16) | .24 (-0.49) |
Associations between personality traits and the political self-placement are mirrored and partially exceeded when considering the WoM-outcomes instead of self-placements in light of the ideological position of the respective parties in Germany’s political landscape (see
Correlations between individual WoM- and trait- scores in the German sample.
*
Next, we performed hierarchical regression analyses to assess whether personality traits are meaningful regressors of political orientation variables beyond demographics. Age, educational status and gender were entered in the first block, followed by openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness in the second block. For the self-placement as regressand, the first model reached significance,
As
WoM | Self-Placement (Left-Right) |
---|---|
Total | .67*** (.59***) |
CDU/CSU | .54*** (.49***) |
SPD | -.32*** (-.34***) |
FDP | .26*** (.28***) |
Die Grünen | -.62*** (-.52***) |
Die Linke | -.67*** (-.58***) |
AfD | .55*** (.51***) |
*
To directly test whether WoM-results are indeed equally—or even to a larger extent—influenced by personality traits as the self-placement, partial correlations (again controlling for gender, age, and educational status) were compared by
To further investigate these relationships, we—following the rational of the dual-process model—performed mediation analysis to see whether openness does exert its influence on political variables via RWA and SDO simultaneously, while the effects of conscientiousness and agreeableness are predominantly mediated by RWA and SDO respectively. Analyses were done for the self-placement first and WoM-total subsequently, entailing one or both mediators. Age, gender, and educational status were entered as covariates in all models. The results of the dual mediator models are presented in
Standardized coefficient | Total Effect Model | Indirect Effect | 95% Bootstrap-Interval |
---|---|---|---|
Y = Self Placement | |||
Model Summary | |||
X: Openness | -.30*** | ||
M1: RWA | -.14 | -.18; -.12 | |
M2: SDO | -.11 | -.14; -.09 | |
Contrast | -.03 | -.08; .01 | |
Y = WoM-Total | |||
Model Summary | |||
X: Openness | -.31*** | ||
M1: RWA | -.14 | -.18; -.11 | |
M2: SDO | -.15 | -.19; -.11 | |
Contrast | .01 | -.05; .07 | |
Y = Self-Placement | |||
Model Summary | |||
X: Conscientiousness | .19*** | ||
M1: RWA | .07 | .05; .09 | |
M2: SDO | .04 | .02; .06 | |
Contrast | .03 | .01; .05 | |
Y = WoM-Total | |||
Model Summary | |||
X: Conscientiousness | .19*** | ||
M1: RWA | .06 | .04; .09 | |
M2: SDO | .04 | .00; .07 | |
Contrast | .03 | -.01; .06 | |
Y = Self-Placement | |||
Model Summary | |||
X: Agreeableness | -.20*** | ||
M1: RWA | -.05 | -.08; -.03 | |
M2: SDO | -.13 | -.16; -.10 | |
Contrast | .07 | .04; .11 | |
Y = WoM-Total | |||
Model Summary | |||
X: Agreeableness | -.30*** | ||
M1: RWA | -.04 | -.07; -.01 | |
M2: SDO | -.17 | -.21; -.13 | |
Contrast | .13 | .08; .18 |
*
Lastly, in the subsample of 245 German participants, who had filled out the WoM2013 as well as the actualized version WoM2017, we checked whether partial correlations between the respective WoM-total-scores and the trait-measures as well as the self-placement differed significantly across the different WoM-versions. The intercorrelation of the total-scores of both WoM-versions was .80 (
Self-Placement vs. WoM-total and… | Openness |
Conscientiousness |
Agreeableness |
||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
US ( |
-.34*** vs. -.35*** | 0.13 | .448 | .19* vs. .27*** | -1.19 | .117 | -.20* vs. -.17* | -0.45 | .327 |
BGR ( |
-.10 vs. -.00 | -0.64 | .261 | -.00 vs. -.34** | 2.15 | .016 | -.15 vs. -.30* | 0.95 | .170 |
ESP ( |
-.26** vs. -.39*** | 1.30 | .096 | .02 vs. .20* | -1.76 | .039 | -.35*** vs. -.42*** | 0.79 | .214 |
DNK ( |
-.10 vs. -.25** | 1.67 | .047 | -.03 vs. .03 | -0.70 | .243 | -.13 vs. -.36*** | 2.69 | .004 |
AUS ( |
-.33** vs. -.31** | -0.18 | .430 | -.01 vs. -.01 | -0.04 | .485 | -.28* vs. -.37*** | 0.86 | .196 |
SWE ( |
-.29* vs. -.07 | -2.21 | .014 | .13 vs. .25 | -1.11 | .133 | -.36** vs. -.27 | -0.91 | .182 |
TUR ( |
-.27* vs. -.46*** | 1.53 | .063 | -.09 vs. -.07 | -0.11 | .456 | -.40*** vs. -.26* | -1.15 | .125 |
*
As for German participants, the associations between dispositional variables and the political self-placement are widely mirrored and often exceeded when the WoM-total variable replaces the self-placement in the international samples (see
Correlations between individual WoM- and trait- scores across international samples.
*
Regression analyses following the same approach as for the German data showed larger and more consistent effects of personality on WoM-total compared to the self-placement across samples (see
As for the German data, partial correlations (controlling for gender and age) of either the self-placement or WoM-total and all trait-measures were compared by
The present study aimed to investigate whether the relationships between political orientation and personality in Germany and various further countries with quite different historical backgrounds are restricted to self-placement measures of political orientation or do extend to measures based on stances on particular political issues. Therefore, political orientation was operationalized not only by self-reports but also by utilizing Germany’s most prominent VAA. As the WoM asks for the participant’s stances on concrete, timely, and relevant policy-issues, we think of it as a more “textual” measure of political orientation, which of course does not necessarily represent a “truer” measure, but undoubtedly a more specific instrument focusing on the “issues”-side of political orientation, leaving out “identity”-related phenomena as party-affiliation (
Additionally, our results hint to a substantial ecological validity of previous findings on the relationship between personality and political orientation, who often suffered from extremely parsimonious operationalizations of the latter. Also, as the WoM is not purpose-built to contain prototypically conservative issues but to give an overview of the German party’s stances on issues relevant in Germany, comparable patterns of relationships between personality and attitudes and the WoM-outcome across different countries represent strong counter-evidence for culture-deterministic and purely anti-dispositional (e.g., rational-choice) accounts of political orientation while strengthening psychological theories which describe a “match” or “elective affinities” between traits, motifs, worldviews and needs on one side and political orientation on the other side (
Considering our results in detail, we first were able to replicate findings of a positive correlation between conscientiousness and a more conservative (self-reported) political orientation and between openness as well as agreeableness and a more liberal political orientation (
On to the question, how personality does influence one’s general political orientation and thereby one’s stance on particular issues, our results are feasible to strengthen the conception of RWA and SDO as persistent motivational goals, sitting in between core personality traits and the political orientation (
Mediational effects on the relationship between conscientiousness and political outcomes were weak for SDO but quite pronounced for RWA. Reasonably, this is due to the match of the RWA subscales submission and conventionalism, which—according to (
Besides replicating findings on the relationships between openness, conscientiousness, RWA, SDO, and political orientation, the present study is of additional value when one of the most pertinent criticisms about RWA- and SDO-related research is taken into account: the potential predictor-criterion-inflation in prior studies (
Generally, the predictive value of Big Five traits as well as RWA and SDO for the WoM, an instrument that was not intentionally designed to be a measure of conservatism or liberalism but compares the positions of several parties and the participant on timely and concrete political issues, in our opinion shows once more, that the conservative-liberal or right-left dimension is not a purely theoretical framework with no relevance in actual political decisions anymore. Instead, it is reflected in every political act.
In our opinion, this thesis is strengthened by the finding that the relationship between personality and the self-placement, but especially the WoM-scores, were unexpectedly stable across international samples, albeit our results here certainly call for replication with larger and more representative international samples. However, especially regarding the WoM-scores, these results are in sharp contrast to anti-dispositional accounts of all kinds.
There are several limitations to the present study to be addressed. First and foremost—as outlined above—our samples were not representative for the entirety of voters in the respective countries: Consistently, the average educational status was quite high, mean age relatively low, and women were frequently overrepresented. These are permanent problems in psychological science. Also, samples were mostly skewed to the right with regard to the political orientation, i.e., participants with a rather left-wing political orientation were overrepresented (see
Synoptically, the current study replicated prior findings on the relationships between core personality traits, persistent motivational goals, and political orientation. It showed these relationships to be invariant across different methods to assess political orientation. In fact, the often stronger and more pronounced results found for the WoM compared to the self-placement may give rise to the presumption, that personality’s influence on political orientation has been rather under- than overestimated. Furthermore, the present study delivered preliminary data, suggesting that these effects may hold across different national contexts. To us, these results corroborate the idea of the political orientation being deeply seated in the human condition.
The present results show that personality influences our political orientation and that this effect is not restricted to abstract terms of left and right but (possibly even more) extends to political issue positions. Therefore, as issue-stances become more and more relevant to explain vote choice, personality’s influence on the latter will remain or even increase. The past has shown that personality profiles were misused by profit-oriented companies to influence elections by customizing political messages to voters' personality. So, while an electorate of issue-voters represents a democratic ideal, even this state of affairs would not supersede political and civic education and independent media as necessary weapons against micro-targeting and fake news.
The Supplementary Materials contain the following items (for access see Index of
Table A1. Gender-Specific Descriptive Statistics Including RWA Subscales Table A2. Big Five’s Correlations (Zero-Order) With Political Outcomes (Including SDO and RWA With Subscales) in the German Sample Table A3. Zero-Order Correlations of all WoM-Scores and Self-Placement, RWA & SDO Table A4. Statistics on the Dual Predictor Models Table A5. Correlations Between Personality, RWA, SDO and Political Outcomes in all Samples Table A6. Hierarchical Regression Analyses Including RWA and SDO as Second-Block predictors Table A7. Complete Mediation Models WoM Items WoM SPSS Syntax File
We thank Julia Laske and Svea Hogeterp for their help in the final editing of the article.
The authors have no funding to report.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.