Big-Five personality and political orientation: Results from four panel studies with representative German samples

Tell Me Who You Vote for, and I'll Tell You Who You Are? The Associations of Political Orientation With Personality and Prosocial Behavior and the Plausibility of Evolutionary Approaches

“…In evaluating these and a multitude of less recent studies on personality's association with political orientation, several caveats emerge, the first of which refers to dimensional complexities on both sides of the relationship: As early as 2011, Gerber et al identified coarse measurements of political orientation as a potential reason for missing or attenuated relationships (Mehrabian, 1996;Alford and Hibbing, 2007). Employing measures differentiating between social and economic conservatism, i.e., acknowledging the two-fold nature described above, led to profound results as in most studies described above (but see Furnham and Fenton-O'Creevy, 2018;Krieger et al, 2019). A valuable qualification of this approach was recently presented by Johnston and colleagues (Johnston's et al, 2017;Johnston, 2018): Using extensive American survey and experimental data, the authors intriguingly showed that measures of closed personality-including but not restricted to Big Five traits-are primarily related to the social or cultural domain of political orientation.…”

“…Though of generally moderate size, meaningful negative associations of conservative political orientation and Big Five traits Openness and Agreeableness, as well as a positive relationship between conservatism and Conscientiousness, are well-established: In high-powered studies across several countries, Openness is consistently negatively associated with conservatism while Conscientiousness is positively (Sibley et al, 2012 ; Bakker, 2017 ; Fatke, 2017 ; Furnham and Fenton-O'Creevy, 2018 ; Krieger et al, 2019 ; Grünhage and Reuter, 2020b ). Expectably, Openness tends to correlate negatively with measures of social and economic conservatism, while Conscientiousness is more predictive of social than economic conservatism (Carney et al, 2008 ; Gerber et al, 2010 , 2011 ; Vecchione et al, 2011 ; Fatke, 2017 ).…”

Individual differences in need satisfaction and intentions to vote for specific political parties – results from Germany

“…Individuals scoring high in Conscientiousness are described as being orderly and they carry out their duties carefully and thoroughly and they work hard (John & Srivastava, 1999;Rammstedt & Danner, 2017). In light of political ideologies, Openness has been positively associated with a more left-leaning ideological positioning, whereas Conscientiousness has been positively related to a more right-leaning ideological positioning (Chirumbolo & Leone, 2010;Krieger et al, 2019). In a similar fashion, Openness and Conscientiousness have repeatedly been found to positively relate to political liberalism and conservatism, respectively (Cooper et al, 2013;Hirsh et al, 2010;Mondak & Halperin, 2008;Sibley et al, 2012).…”

“…e . , O p e n n e s s a n d Conscientiousness) and political ideology and voting, the effect sizes of these associations are usually small; see, for example, meta-analytic correlations of political ideology with Openness and Conscientiousness in the German context which were r = |0.07| and r = |0.06|, respectively (Krieger et al, 2019). This highlights the importance to investigate other factors aside from the Big Five in this research field.…”

“…Previous research in the field of political psychology has among others investigated individual differences, for example in stable personality traits, and how they relate to political ideologies and party preferences (Krieger et al, 2019;Vecchione et al, 2011). However, effect sizes of these associations are usually rather small and next to differences in stable personality traits, researchers also emphasize the importance of individual values and needs in political contexts (Inglehart, 1971).…”