The personalities of politicians: A big five survey of American legislators

The personalities of Danish MPs: Trait‐ and aspect‐level differences

“…Contrary to quite a few previous studies, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness did not differ across ideology and the left–right divide in Danish MPs, but liberal MPs were more agreeable (cf. Caprara et al, ; Hanania, ). On the aspect level, liberal political orientation was associated with compassion, but not politeness.…”

“…Liberals/left-wing political elites tend to score higher on Openness to Experience. Somewhat surprisingly, only two studies found Agreeableness to be related to liberal orientations (Caprara et al, 2010;Hanania, 2017). The inconsistent findings for Agreeableness may be due to the fact that the trait contains aspects that are differently related to political orientations (Hirsh, DeYoung, Xu, & Peterson, 2010;Osborne, Wootton, & Sibley, 2013).…”

“…A recent study of 278 state legislators (response rate = 4%) used a 50‐item Big Five inventory from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP). It showed that political elites were significantly more extraverted and emotionally stable than respondents in a convenience sample of 2,586 Americans (Hanania, ). Elites were also more conscientious and agreeable than the average American in the benchmark sample, but the differences were substantially smaller.…”

“…There are only a few studies of the personality traits of political elites based on validated, direct measures (Italy: Caprara, Barbaranelli, Consiglio, Picconi, & Zimbardo, ; Caprara, Francescato, Mebane, Sorace, & Vecchione, ; Germany: Best, ; United States: Constantini & Craik, ; Dietrich, Lasley, Mondak, Remmel, & Turner, ; Hanania, ; see also Hennessy, ; McConaughy, ). So far, no study of legislators has been undertaken in a Scandinavian country, and, to our knowledge, no one has examined personality differences both on the Big Five level and the aspect level.…”

“…Translated into Big Five terms, Republicans scored higher on traits associated with Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability, and perhaps Extraversion, whereas Democrats scored higher on Openness to Experience. The recent study by Hanania () reported that high Openness and Agreeableness were more widespread among Democrats, whereas high Conscientiousness was more frequently found among Republicans. When correlated with ideological self‐placement, only Openness remained significant.…”