Personality and Politics

1. Personality and Politics Why do we vote the way we do? Does our personality dictate our political beliefs?

2. Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives: Associations of Agreeableness with Political Ideology and Moral Values Jacob B. Hirsh, Colin G. DeYoung, Xiaowen Xu and Jordan B. Peterson (2010)

3. Past Research • Political beliefs are derived from deeper psychological needs which suggests that individuals may be predisposed by their personality to adopt particular ideological perspectives. • The adoption of political beliefs satisfies a variety of motivational needs. • For instance: Political conservatism is a belief system characterized by resistance to change and the acceptance of inequality , which are strategies that serve as defenses against the experience of threat and uncertainty (Jost et al., 2007)

4. Could political attitudes be related to personality traits? • Findings that political attitudes are heritable and thus genetically influenced (Bouchard et al., 2003; Koenig & Bouchard, 2006) highlight the possibility of a connection to basic traits. • Conservatives: Higher on Conscientiousness • Liberals: Higher on Openness (Intellect) (Carney, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2008; Goldberg & Rosolack, 1994; Jost,2006).

5. What about Agreeableness? • Authors suggest that Agreeableness is not usually mentioned as a factor influencing political beliefs because it can be divided into 2 opposite aspects: Compassion and politeness • Authors suggest that compassion is associated to liberalism while politeness is associated with conservatism • This is based on the common conception that liberals are more interested in equality and justice while conservatives are more interested in order, tradition and stability (Hirsh et al., 2010)

6. Studies 2 studies aiming at deciphering possible reasons for the lack of association between Agreeableness and political affiliation Study 1. Aim: to determine whether the two aspects of Agreeableness (compassion and politeness) correlate with different political values. Hypothesis: • Politeness correlates with politically conservative values • Compassion correlates with politically liberal values.

7. METHOD 481 participants between the ages of 20-83 years (97% white). Members of the Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS), which is a longitudinal data collection project, since 1994. ESCS members voluntarily take questionnaire that they receive through the mail in exchange for money.

8. MEASURES • Big Five Aspect Scale (BFAS): derived by DeYoung et al. in 2007 for measuring the broad big 5 dimensions of personality as well as the lower levels : Agreeableness: Compassion and Politeness Extraversion: Assertiveness and Enthusiasm Conscientiousness : Industriousness and orderliness Neuroticism: Volatility and Withdrawal Openness: Openness and Intellect Consists of 100 descriptions. Participants must rate their level of agreement on a 5 point lykert scale. • BFI: Big Five Inventory (Self and Peer reports), together with a political party preference questionnaire given to the ESCS members in 2001 • IPIP: 10 item scale assessing liberal vs. Conservative values on a 5 point lykert scale given to ESCS members between 1994 and 1996.

9. RESULTS • Significant results were observed for Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness. • Politically republican attitudes correlate positively with conscientiousness and correlate negatively with Agreeableness and Openness. • The significant results of Conscientiousness are driven by Orderliness but not by Industriousness. • The significant results of Openness are driven by Openness but not by Intellect. • Republican scores correlate positively with politeness and negatively with compassion while liberal score correlate positively with compassion and negatively with politeness.

10. AUTHORS’ COMMENTS • Past research has failed to acknowledge the association between Agreeableness and political affiliation because of the instruments and analysis employed. • This study used a variety of Big Five instruments which made it possible to compare their ability to predict political outcomes in a set of post hoc analyses. • The sub divisions of Agreeableness are suppressed when measuring for all 5 factors simultaneously. These only emerges when the other factors are being controlled for. Also, the effects of politeness and compassion on political values can only be observed if the tools employed can differentiate between the two within Agreeableness. • Aspect level analysis (sub divisions) is preferable to facet level analysis (Big 5) because it provides a clearer indication of underlying personality processes.

11. STUDY 2 • Based on past research (e.g. Haidt & Graham, 2007) which claim that a motivational system underlies moral values and political view • Aim: by using multidimensional measure of moral values explain lack of correlation in previous studies between Agreeableness and political affiliation • Hypothesis: Higher levels of Compassion correlates with egalitarian moral system. Low Openness-Intellect and high Conscientiousness to traditional moral system

12. METHODS & MEASURES • Participants - 146 members of University of Toronto community, who voted at least once • Moral Foundation Questionnaire (MFQ) • Harm-Care • Fairness-Reciprocity • Ingroup-Loyalty • Authority-Respect • Purity-Sanctity • Other measures same as in Study 1 : BFAS personality test IPIP demographic questionnaire

13. RESULTS • Factor analysis of MFQ showed two factors: Egalitarianism and Order-Traditionalism. • Moral values related to Order-Traditionalism were significantly related to higher levels of Conscientiousness and low Openness-Intellect. • Moral values related to Egalitarianism were significantly related to higher levels of Agreeableness (primary due to Compassion trait) • General associations between Personality (BFAS) and Moral Foundations (MFQ) • Compassion significantly related to Harm-Care and Fairness-Reciprocity • Politeness significantly related to Authority-Respect • Political affiliations were independetly significantly predicted by both egalitarianism and order-traditionalism

14. AUTHORS’ COMMENTS • Compassion reflects egalitarianism • Politeness reflects order-traditionalism • Previous research has shown that egalitarianism and order-traditionalism are two separate motivational factors • They both affect political affiliation, they vary independently within individuals and predict different aspect of political views • Personality traits affect the strength of theses two motivational systems

15. Conclusions Conservative political views Political views Order-traditionalism Moral dimension Resistance to change Acceptance of inequality Personality trait High level of Orderliness and Politeness Low level of Openness-Intellect Low level of Compassion

16. CONCLUSIONS • Different political beliefs usually indicate different psychological needs • The research showed that personality traits (e.g. Openness, Orderliness, Politeness, Compassion) are associated with political beliefs • It is the first research to divide Agreeableness into Politeness and Compassion in order to find relation with political affiliation • Politeness -> Conservative views • Compassion -> Liberal views • Political beliefs come from a balance of two independent moral dimensions: • Traditionalism • Egalitarianism • Personality traits impact political beliefs by influencing relative strength of the two moral models within an individual • If e.g. an individual has high need for equality (i.e. egalitarianism -> liberal) and high need for order (i.e. traditionalism -> conservative), he will probably have moderate political views

17. The nature of the relationship between personality traits and political attitudes. A study looking into the interaction between personality traits, values, political tendencies and genetics. Verhulst, Hatemi and Martin.

18. Background • The purpose of the study was to build on the previous research on the interrelation of personality and right-left wing ideology. • The authors felt that earlier studies lacked an in depth exploration into the processes behind the results obtained and have drawn up their own dimensions to expand and explore the correlations previously found.

19. Introduction: • Previous research is reported in the article to have been looking to find undesirable correlations between personality traits and conservative views. E.g. openness to experience being negatively correlated with conservatism. (Adorno et al., 1950.) • Recently a correlation was found between neuroticism and economic liberalism but this has since been downplayed. (Leeson and Heaven, 1999) • The traditional outlook is that personality causes political views. However, no behaviour can be predicted fully by personality so why should this be any different for voting tendencies. • Political attitudes tend to be viewed as preferences which arise from social environment, parental influences and cultural transmission.

20. 30 years ago political attitudes were investigated in relation to genetics using a sample of 6000 American twins. (Eaves and Eyesenck, 1974.) They found that the majority of the covariance between Psychoticism and Militaristic/Defence attitudes was due to an underlying genetic influence. However, the findings were briefly discussed and have remained unaddressed since. • This study combined: religiousness, authoritarian dispositions and traditional conservatism into a core value/world view system. • By doing so they felt that they synthesised more accurate dimensions that could be more easily traced back to genetic variability. • The authors hypothesised that there would be both genetic and environmental sources of covariance between personality traits and political attitudes. In order to further this line of thought, they used a large sample of Australian twins.

21. Method; Sample: • Adult Australian Twins, N=20,559. • 7234 individual twins, 3254 same sex pairs and 363 different sex pairs. • Mean age of sample = 38.6 and of twins = 34.1. • Females made up 57.7% of the entire sample and 63% of twins.

22. Method; Measures: • Short form of the revised personality questionnaire, with subscales for extraversion, psychoticism, neuroticism and social desirability. (Eyesenck and Eyesenck, 1997.) • By the authors definition: Extraversion had two sub components; • 1) Affiliation/Sociability: (defined as interpersonal bonds, warm and affectionate, sociable and expressive.) • 2) Agency/Impulsivity: (goal orientated behaviour, ambition, dogmatism, social dominance, leadership aggression and assertiveness.

23. Psychoticism is also defined in two components: • 1) + with authoritarianism, risk taking, impulsivity, tough mindedness, practicality, magic ideation, religiosity, • 2) – with openness to experience, (preoccupation with rules and regulations and low introspection.) • Neuroticism: feelings of inferiority, unhappiness, anxiety, dependence, hypochondria, guilt, emotional instability and obsessiveness. • Social desirability: Characterised by aquiescence/ conformity and lack of insight. • Political and Social attitudes were measured using a 50 item index, all were contemporary issues at the time.

24. Such as: death penalty, Bible truth, legalized prostitution, immigration and stricter jail terms. • 26 of these items were used to construct the 4 political attitude dimensions: • 1) Religious: Sabbath observance, divorce, Church authority. • 2) Sex: abortion, , gay rights and casual sex. • 3) Out-groups: white supremacy, conservationists and apartheid. • 4) Punishment: jail terms, teenage delinquency and caning. • They added a liberal-conservative ideological measure using all of the 50 items.

25. Results

26. Correlations Between Personality Traits and Attitude Dimensions • All correlations had to be above a value of 0.2 to be counted as significant effect size. • Higher positive scores on personality factors denoted higher levels of the trait. • Higher scores on the attitude factors denoted more liberal responses.

27. Psychoticism • For both males and females, psychoticism was strongly and negatively correlated with religious attitude, sex attitude, punishment attitude and general ideology dimensions. • In other words, psychoticism was positively associated with conservative attitudes which is consistent with previous research. (Adorno et al., 1950) • Expected because such ideas are central to concept of Authoritarianism, which is also known to be associated with psychoticism. (Bouchard, 2009) • Magnitude of relationships was unexpected.

28. Extraversion • For both sexes, extraversion was only correlated with sex attitudes, in a negative (more conservative) direction. • Although older literature has linked extraversion with conservatism and authoritarianism (Eysenck & Wilson, 1978), most of the contemporary studies have not reported the observed relationship with sex attitudes. • The authors actually expected the relationship to be in the opposite direction. Extraversion has been long established as a significant influence on sex drive, earlier age of first intercourse and promiscuity.

29. Extraversion • Evidence that reported attitudes do not necessarily match actual behaviour!! • Cooper et al, (2000) found that extraverts having more liberal sexual behaviour. • The authors suggested that as extraversion did correlate .37 with psychoticism, the link between extraversion and sex attitudes may have been more of a function of the very strong relationship between psychoticism and sex attitudes.

30. Neuroticism • Correlated positively with out-group attitudes (more liberal). • Previous studies have more specifically linked neuroticism and liberal economic ideologies. • This result is also in line with recent studies in America on attitudes to immigration.

31. Social Desirability • For both genders was correlated positively with all but one of the dimensions of social attitudes (more liberal). • Only males attitudes to out-groups did not correlate at all with social desirability. • Supports a study last year also by Verhulst et al. which also showed a link between social desirability and liberal attitudes.

32. Social Desirability • Although there is a clear empirical relationship, no theoretical justifications have as yet been resolved. • Strict extremist attitudes are no longer as tolerated as they once might have been (eg church law on homosexuality). • The links between SD and attitudes were all in the opposite direction to relationship with P which also makes sense (as P is negatively related to openness to experience).

33. Genetic Analyses • Support for the presence of genetic influences: correlations between MZ twins were substantially larger than correlations between DZ same sex twins. • MZ-DZ correlation differences were much greater for personality dimensions than for social attitude factors. • Suggests more importance of environmental influences on social attitude dimensions than on personality traits.

34. Genetic Analyses: Personality vs Social Attitudes • Using a multivariate genetic model, demonstrated that relationships for P, N and E with social attitudes had more genetic influences than environmental. • On the other hand, the link between SD and the different attitudes more down to environmental influences. The “social” nature of the trait makes this connection more expected than the other personality traits.

35. Discussion • As suggested by the authors in the introduction, the relationships between personality traits and political ideologies were not simple or uniform. • Finding, that majority of covariance between personality and social attitudes is due to genetics, is strong evidence that uniquely environmentally driven theories are not suitable to describe such a complex relationship.

36. Conclusion • The relationship between personality traits and dimensions of social attitudes is more complex than previous research has suggested. • A) We cannot assume causality. • B) With regard to the link between personality and political attitudes we cannot limit the personality traits to the big five. • C) Equally, we cannot narrow the spectrum of political views to just the left-right (liberal-conservative) divide.

37. References • Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row. • Bouchard, T. J. Jr, (2009). Authoritarianism religiousness and conservatism: Is obedience to authority the explanation for clustering universality and evolution? In E. Voland & W. Scheifenhovel (Eds.), The biological evolution of religious mind and behavior (pp. 165–180). Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer. • Bouchard, T., Segal, N., Tellegen, A., McGue, M., Keyes, M., & Krueger, R. (2003). Evidence for the construct validity and heri- tability of the Wilson–Patterson Conservatism Scale: A reared- apart twins study of social attitudes. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(6), 959-969. • Carney, D., Jost, J., Gosling, S., & Potter, J. (2008). The secret lives of liberals and conservatives: Personality profiles, interaction styles, and the things they leave behind. Political Psychology, 29(6), 807-840. • Cooper, M. L., Agocha, V. B., & Sheldon, M. S. (2000). A motivational perspective on risky behaviors: The role of personality and affect regulatory processes. Journal of Personality, 68(6) • DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: Ten aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Per- sonality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 880-896. • Eaves, L. J., & Eysenck, H. J. (1974). Genetics and the development of social attitudes.Nature, 249, 288–289. • Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1997). Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised(EPQ-R) and short scale (EPQ-RS). Madrid: TEA Ediciones. • Eysenck, H. J., & Wilson, G. D. (1978). The psychological basis of ideology. Lancaster:MTP Press.

38. Goldberg, L. R., & Rosolack, T. K. (1994). The Big Five factor struc- ture as an integrative framework: An empirical comparison with Eysenck’s PEN model. In C. F. Halverston, Jr., G. A. Kohnstamm, & R. P. Martin (Eds.), The developing structure of temperament and personality from infancy to adulthood (pp. 7-35). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. • Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recog- nize. Social Justice Research, 20(1), 98-116. • Jost, J. T., Napier, J. L., Thorisdottir, H., Gosling, S. D., Palfai, T. P., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Are needs to manage uncertainty and threat asso- ciated with political conservatism or ideological extremity? Person- ality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(7), 989-1007 • Koenig, L. B., & Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (2006). Genetic and envi- ronmental influences on the traditional moral values triad— Authoritarianism, conservatism and religiousness—as assessed by quantitative behavior genetic methods. In P. McNamara (Ed.), Where God and science meet: How brain and evolutionary studies alter our understanding of religion (Vol. 1, pp. 31-60). Westport, CT: Praeger. • Leeson, P., & Heaven, P. C. L. (1999). Social attitudes and personality. AustralianJournal of Psychology, 51, 19–24. • Verhulst, B., Hatemi, P. K., & Eaves, L. J. (2009). Personality traits and political ideologies. In Paper presented at the 39th annual meeting of the behavior genetics association, Minneapolis, MN, June 17–20