Personality and Euroscepticism: The Impact of Personality on Attitudes Towards the EU

Abstract

Attitudes towards EU integration are widely studied, yet we know only little about the role of personality for EU attitudes. Utilizing a framing experiment encompassing positive and negative frames of EU integration, this article reports on how personality influences attitudes towards EU integration, and how personal predispositions moderate framing effects, impacting EU attitude formation. The study relies on Danish and Swedish data (N = 1808). I test both the direct impact of personality on EU attitudes and personality's moderating impact on framing effects. I find that extraversion and openness positively correlate with positive EU attitudes, while people scoring high on neuroticism tend to support the EU less. Furthermore, I find that personality moderates different EU frames. Individuals with certain personality traits are more influenced by framing effects than others, while positive and negative frames also are perceived differently according to personal predispositions. I find only little country differences between Denmark and Sweden.

To Brexit or not to Brexit: The roles of Islamophobia, conspiracist beliefs, and integrated threat in voting intentions for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

“…According to Stephan et al (2009), perceptions of intergroup threat arise within particular social contexts, but also vary in relation to individual difference variables (Bakker & de Vreese, 2016;Nielsen, 2016). One such variable, derived from social identity theory, is the extent to which individuals identify with their in-group.…”

The Role of Personality, Authoritarianism and Cognition in the United Kingdom’s 2016 Referendum on European Union Membership

“…Within the last decade, a small number of studies have begun to explore how personality traits correlate with attitudes to EU membership, identity, Euroscepticism and immigration (Bakker & de Vreese, 2016;Curtis, 2016;Gallego & Pardos-Prado, 2014;Nielsen, 2016;Schoen & Schumann, 2007). As with political orientation, both openness and conscientiousness appear to play 1 https://osf.io/urt63/ PERSONALITY AND COGNITION IN THE EU REFERENDUM 7 a significant role in attitudes to the EU and Euroscepticism.…”

“…More recently, scholars have begun investigating relationships between personality and a number of different attitudes to the EU (Bakker & de Vreese, 2016;Curtis, 2016;Nielsen, 2016;Schoen & Schumann, 2007).…”

“…Relationships between political orientation and both agreeableness and extraversion appear less frequently in research, although agreeableness has been observed to have a negative but weak correlation with conservatism. Given the negative relationship between social conservatism and support for EU integration (Hooghe et al, 2004;Prosser, 2016), a reasonable hypothesis is that Leave voters will, as a population, display higher conscientiousness together with lower openness, neuroticism and agreeableness than Remain voters.Within the last decade, a small number of studies have begun to explore how personality traits correlate with attitudes to EU membership, identity, Euroscepticism and immigration (Bakker & de Vreese, 2016;Curtis, 2016;Gallego & Pardos-Prado, 2014;Nielsen, 2016;Schoen & Schumann, 2007). As with political orientation, both openness and conscientiousness appear to play 1 https://osf.io/urt63/ PERSONALITY AND COGNITION IN THE EU REFERENDUM 7 a significant role in attitudes to the EU and Euroscepticism.…”

“…For the most part, we found support for our hypotheses with Leave voters self-reporting PERSONALITY AND COGNITION IN THE EU REFERENDUM 25 higher scores in conscientiousness and extraversion than Remain voters and Remain voters selfreporting higher scores in neuroticism and openness than Leave voters. The exception which did not support our hypothesis, was that we did not observe any significant differences in agreeableness between Leave and Remain voters.Our hypotheses were informed by a large body of research consistently showing the role the Big Five personality traits play in relation to both social conservatism (Carney et al, 2008;Sibley et al, 2012;Vecchione et al, 2011) and Euroscepticism (Bakker &de Vreese, 2016;Curtis, 2016;Gallego & Pardos-Prado, 2014;Nielsen, 2016;Schoen & Schumann, 2007), with openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism expected to play the largest roles. While there were many reasons for people voting Leave or Remain, our hypotheses were based on an assumption that the vote would encapsulate and correlate very strongly with overall levels of positive or negative perceptions of the EU as an institution.…”