Personality and the Foundations of Political Behavior

Mondak, Jeffery J.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511761515.001

Cited by 126 publications

(279 citation statements)

References 328 publications

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“…It is undeniable that gender underlies commonly-observed social network effects, but the constellation of mechanisms needs further attention. Personality batteries hold some promise (Gerber et al 2010;Mondak 2010), though the related expectations considered here did not find much support. Instead, perhaps concepts more closely tied to politics -such as conflict avoidance -could be employed to considerable benefit (Mutz 2002;Ulbig and Funk 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

“…4 Two studies find evidence that some aspects of the Big 5 personality traits are related to exposure to disagreement in networks. Mondak (2010) reports that more agreeable people have less disagreement as network size increases, and that the extraverted do not shy away from disagreement. Mondak also finds that gender moderates the effect of extraversion on the desire to engage in discussion before forming opinions, with men expressing less interest in discussion the more extraverted they are (2010: 143).…”

Section: Responses To Social Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Political Consequences of Gender in Social Networks

Djupe¹,

McClurg²,

Sokhey³

2016

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Recent research on political discussion has focused on whether aspects of interaction create a ‘democratic dilemma’ for the mass public in which people face a choice between political participation and political tolerance. This article argues that there are important variations in how people react to their immediate social contacts. It explores this idea by studying how social disagreement and expertise interact with gender to explain variance in political participation. First, it shows that there are conflicting expectations in the literature about how such dynamics should manifest, despite agreement that men and women should experience different kinds and degrees of social influence. Secondly, it examines these expectations by revisiting prominent, network-based explanations of political participation; it finds that these relationships do not display consistency across sex differences. The results point to the existence of varied ‘social logics’ for men and women, and suggest the need to reconsider how to think about the efficacy of discussion and disagreement in a democratic society.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Section: Responses To Social Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Consequences of Gender in Social Networks

Djupe¹,

McClurg²,

Sokhey³

2016

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…The basic model of personality traits sees them as "core dispositional personality traits" that are prior to "values, [and] attitudes (including political attitudes such as ideology)" (Gerber et al 2010: 113). Traits are acquired very early in life (Caspi et al 2003) as a result of the interaction of genetics (Bouchard 1994) and early childhood experiences (Krueger et al 2006, Mondak et al 2010. Traits show significant stability over the course of a person's life Bem 1990, McCrae andCosta 1984), though they can continue to evolve even into old age (Roberts and Mroczek 2008).…”

Section: Personality Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In perhaps the most comprehensive study to date, Mondak (2010) looked at a range of possible relationships between personality and politics in the United States. As with Gerber et al, the findings for openness and conscientiousness were strong and consistent, while those for the other traits were generally weak and variable.…”

Section: Agreeablenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, rather than developing our own battery as some scholars have done (Anderson 2009, Mondak et al 2010, we translated an existing measure that has been used in a number of very prominent studies in political science (Gerber et al 2010(Gerber et al , 2011a(Gerber et al , 2011b and in hundreds more studies by personality psychologists. At the time of writing this article, the TIPI has been cited some 3000 times.…”

Section: Measuring Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agreeable Authoritarians: Personality and Politics in Contemporary Russia

Greene¹,

Robertson

2016

SSRN Journal

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Do Political Attitudes and Religiosity Share a Genetic Path?

Friesen

Ksiazkiewicz

2014

Polit Behav

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Social scientists have long recognized and sought to explain a connection between religious and political beliefs. Our research challenges the prevalent view that religion and politics constitute separate but related belief sets with a conceptual model that suggests the correlation between the two may be partially explained by an underlying psychological construct reflecting first principle beliefs on social organization. Moreover, we also push this challenge further by considering whether part of the relationship between political and religious beliefs is the result of shared genetic influences, which would suggest that a shared biological predisposition, or set of biological predispositions, underlies these attitudes. Using a classic twin design on a sample of American adults, we demonstrate that certain religious, political, and first principle beliefs can be explained by genetic and unique environmental components, and that the correlation between these three trait structures is primarily due to a common genetic path. As predicted, this relationship is found to hold for social ideology, but not for economic ideology. These findings provide evidence that the overlap between the religious and the political in the American context may in part be due to underlying principles regarding how to understand and organize society and that these principles may be adopted to satisfy biologically-influenced psychological needs.Key words: Behavior genetics; religion and politics; twin study; ideologyThe data employed in this project is publicly available and collected with the financial support of the National Science Foundation in the form of SES-0721378, PI: John R. Hibbing; Co-PIs: John R. Alford, Lindon J. Eaves, Carolyn L. Funk, Peter K. Hatemi, and Kevin B. Smith, and with the cooperation of the Minnesota Twin Registry at the University of Minnesota, Robert Krueger and Matthew McGue, Directors. Rather than thinking about religious beliefs influencing political attitudes through an intentional cognitive process (e.g. The Bible says homosexuality is wrong, therefore I oppose gay marriage) or political attitudes leading to changes in religious affiliation upon entering adulthood (Putnam and Campbell 2012), this study examines whether these belief systems overlap at least in part because they both represent an individual's preferences for "bedrock principles of group life," such as a preference for maintaining traditional moral values in society (Smith, Oxley, Hibbing, Alford and Hibbing 2011b). Our research challenges the prevalent view that religion and politics constitute separate but related belief sets with a conceptual model that explains both political and religious beliefs as rooted in the same underlying psychological construct reflecting first principle beliefs on social organization. Moreover, we also push this challenge further by considering whether part of the relationship between political and religious beliefs is the result of shared genetic influences, which would suggest that a shared predispo...

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Personality and the Foundations of Political Behavior

Cited by 126 publications

References 328 publications

The Political Consequences of Gender in Social Networks

The Political Consequences of Gender in Social Networks

Agreeable Authoritarians: Personality and Politics in Contemporary Russia

Do Political Attitudes and Religiosity Share a Genetic Path?

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