Personality and Politics: Values, Traits, and Political Choice

Abstract

Voters' political choices have presumably come to depend more on their personal preferences and less on their social characteristics in Western democracies. We examine two aspects of personality that may influence political choice, traits and personal values, using the Five Factor Model of personality traits and the Schwartz (1992) theory of basic personal values. Data from 3044 voters for the major coalitions in the Italian national election of 2001 showed that supporters of the two coalitions differed in traits and values, largely as hypothesized. Center‐left voters were higher than center‐right voters in the traits of friendliness and openness and lower in energy and conscientiousness. Regarding values, center‐left voters were higher than center‐right voters in universalism, benevolence, and self‐direction and lower in security, power, achievement, conformity, and tradition. Logistic regressions revealed that values explained substantial variance in past and future voting and in change of political choice, trumping personality traits. We discuss explanations for the primacy of values and implications for the social cognitive view of personality.

Research Productivity and Values

“…The circumplex structure of basic human values (Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004) is shown in Figure 1. Although Schwartz values have been studied in different contexts across the globe (see for example Schwartz, Melech, Lehmann, Burgess, Harris & Owens, 2001;Caprara, Schwartz, Capanna, Vecchione & Bararanelli, 2006;Schwartz & Bardi, 2001: 2), the influence of Schwartz values dimensions upon university research productivity has not, to our knowledge, been investigated. …”

Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships across Issue Domains and Political Contexts

“…6;Van Hiel, Kossowska, and Mervielde 2000;Van Hiel and Mervielde 2004) and left-party voting (Barbaranelli et al 2007;Caprara, Barbaranelli, and Zimbardo 1999;Caprara et al 2006;Rentfrow et al 2009;Schoen and Schumann 2007) in earlier research. 7 As suggested in prior research demonstrating the link between Openness and liberalism, those who are more open respond positively to unconventional and complex stimuli (Neuberg and Newsom 1993).…”

“…6; but see Hibbing 2007 andMehrabian 1996) and voting for conservative/right-wing candidates (Barbaranelli et al 2007;Caprara, Barbaranelli, and Zimbardo 1999;Caprara et al 2006;Rentfrow et al 2009;Schoen and Schumann 2007). Given that those who are more Conscientious exhibit socially prescribed impulse control and are more likely to adhere to norms and rules (John and Srivastava 1999;Jost 2006;Jost et al 2003), this is not surprising: identifying as a conservative involves supporting traditional norms in both the economic (e.g., work hard and you will get ahead [Devine 1972;Feldman 1988;Feldman and Zaller 1992;Goren 2005;Lipset 1979;McClosky and Zaller 1984]) and social (e.g., defend traditional family values [Goren 2005;) policy domains.…”

The Effect of Elite Polarization: A Comparative Perspective on How Party Elites Influence Attitudes and Behavior on Climate Change in the European Union

“…One is built around the idea that citizens select candidates and parties that are closest to their own preferences. After all, citizens have stable predispositions such as values that influence political issue positions [21] and vote choice [22]. Since politicians want to get elected or stay in office, they adjust their positions according to the will of the public [23].…”