From Dispositions to Goals to Ideology: Toward a Synthesis of Personality and Social Psychological Approaches to Political Orientation

Abstract

We review existing research on the associations between political orientation and Big Five traits such as Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness. We suggest that analyzing these traits at the aspect level sheds light on motivational mechanisms underlying these links. For example, we present evidence that only one of the two aspects of Conscientiousness ("Orderliness") reliably predicts conservatism. To account for this relationship, and to more generally describe how traits translate into political orientation, we present a new model, the Disposition-Goals-Ideology (DiGI) Model. The DiGI model outlines specific interrelationships among dispositions, goals, and ideological beliefs that help to shape individual differences in political orientation.

Political party membership and personality characteristics in the Czech Republic (2005)

“…Members of only one of the right-wing political parties -ODSwere found to score lower in openness to experience than the population sample and there was no relationship found between openness and left-wing party membership. This only partially replicates the results concerning the connection between openness and left-wing activism (Blankenship, Frederick, Savas, Stewart, & Montgomery, 2017) and liberalism (Xu, Plaks, & Peterson, 2016;Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011), or the negative correlation between openness and the preference for rightist parties from other countries (Caprara et al, 1999;Schoen & Schumann, 2007). However, this might be because the simplistic left-right or liberalconservative dichotomy might not easily be applied to the Czech political parties: ODA and ED (referred to here as right-wing parties) were parties with many liberal issues included in their political program, and KSČM (referred to here as the left-wing party) is a party which celebrates the old times of the communist regime and rejects the new liberal society.…”

Disgust and Deontology: Trait Sensitivity to Contamination Promotes a Preference for Order, Hierarchy, and Rule-Based Moral Judgment

“…Why might this be? We have suggested that one of the functions of making order is to reduce exposure to contamination (Xu et al, 2016). That is, an orderly physical environment promotes better visibility for noticing potential contaminants.…”

“…Given that the function of moral disgust is to protect the group from individuals who threaten the established social order, one response to an experience of moral disgust may be an affirmation of the group’s values, hierarchy, and rules. By maintaining and affirming the society’s rules, one might be better positioned to identify—and avoid or punish—rule violators (see Xu, Plaks, & Peterson, 2016). Thus, according to this perspective, the relationship between disgust and deontological judgment should be mediated by a preference for the maintenance of societal order.…”

The Political is Personal: The Costs of Daily Politics

“…By recruiting politically-diverse participants in both studies, we were able to also examine whether political orientation (i.e., party or ideology) plays a role in people's daily responses to politics as well as whether any of our hypotheses hinge upon -or are relatively robust across -different political orientations. People from different political orientations are known to differ in personality (Sibley et al, 2012;Xu et al, 2016), worldview (Feinberg et al, 2020;Jost et al, 2003), and morality (Graham et al, 2009(Graham et al, , 2011, and it is possible these differences might translate into differences in how individuals experience and respond to daily politics. We explore these possibilities in exploratory analyses of political orientation in both of our studies, considering specifically Democrats and Republicans in Study 1, and broadening our focus to also include independents in Study 2, and also considering political ideology (measured continuously) in both studies.…”