OF WHAT RELEVANCE IS PERSONALITY IN THE DETERMINATION OF POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR

INTRODUCTION

Personality is one significant source of individual differences in the way individuals interact with their environments and it affects numerous life outcomes, among which, one might suspect, is political behavior.  The mechanisms through which personality operates to affect political behavior are less clear. As a recent article points out,’’effort is needed to strengthen theories regarding the possible  significance of personality’’ [Mondak et al, 2010, p. 20]. These authors further suggest that personality can be expected  to influence political activity through its effect on other intermediary factors and by interaction with individual and contextual characteristics.
Building on this idea, Blais and Labbe-st Vincent [2011] have formulated  the mediation hypothesis, which claims that the effect of personality is mostiy indirect;  it is mediated by classical attitudinal predictors of participation. They focus on voter turnout  and and show that four  lower order  personality variables affect the the acquisition of civic  duty and political preferences, the two most  proximate predictors of voter turnout. However, they do not use the widely accepted Big Five framework  and their analysis does not directly assess the hypothesized indirect pathaways.

By focusing on two very different forms of political participation, we show that  the effects of personality traits are mode-specific. Voter turnout is the most important participatory activity, and we examine turnout  in the European parliament [EP] elections, a  second order  election  in which there is maximum variation the decision  to turn out to vote. Protest participation is an increasingly popular and widespread  way of influencing politics in advanced industrial democracies [Van Aelst Walgrave 2001]. Spain is an appropriate setting to study the impact of personality on personality on protest participation because this activity is not marginal but among the most frequent political activities.

PERSONALITY AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

 Personality psychologists have now reached a widespread consensus that personality can be summarized by the Big Five personality traits. Extraversion is linked to positive emotionality. Agreeableness describes a prosocial and  communal orientation. Conscientiousness  implies a high control over  impulses  and task-and –goal oriented behaviors.  Neuroticism, as contrasted with emotional  stability, is associated  with negative emotionality. Personality is important beyond  personality theory because  it influences a wide range  of attitudes  and behaviors across an impressive variety of domains.

Recently political scientists have begun to look at their impact on political behavior. The Big Five are related to  a wide array of political activities such as voting , participating in local and national politics,  contacting politicians or participating in protest activities both in the Anglo-Saxon and  and  Latin-American countries and in some cases their effect is just as large as that of classical predictors such as education and income.[Gerber et al. 2011].

These studies have assessed the effect of personality  in multivariate  models controlling for socio-economic and demographic predictors, but rarely for attitudinal  predictors. The theoretical framework proposed by Mondak and his colleagues [Mondak et al. 2010] states that the effects  of personality on political behavior are likely to be mediated and moderated  by other individual and environmental factors. Recentiy, Blais and Labbe-St-Vincent [2011] have claimed that four lower order personality traits [altruism, shyness, efficacy and conflict avoidance affect the acquisition political preferences and the belief that voting is a civic duty. In turn, these attitudes are proximate causes of voter turnout.  After controlling for the effect of duty and preferences there is no direct effect of personality on participation suggesting that the effect is indirect. This is the mediation hypothesis. If true, the hypothesis that personality effects are indirect widens our understanding of the process that brings some people to participate in politics. It suggest that there is a funnel of causality in which more distant factors such as sex, age, or personality influence political attitudes which more proximate causes of behavior. The general  intuition is that personality shapes cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to a range of daily situations, which influences the acquisition of politically relevant attitudes. For example, when taught about politics or given the choice of reading a newspaper, a person may be excited and interested in the opportunity of learning about a new issue, or conversely, may fail to feel interest. In the long run individual differences  in the reaction to exposure to new  information should help to develop the habit of reading  newspaper and political interest, which are more important predictors of participation.

The first personality trait  considered  is conscientiousness. Social norms are socially enforced  rules of conduct that operate  in three steps. People needs to be aware that they exist. Second, norms may or may not be internalized and accepted. Finally, norms are enforced. Conscientiousness should play a role in the second step. Conscientious people should be more ready to internalize the norm that voting is a duty and to act accordingly. The link between conscientiousness and norm-abiding behavior is firmly established. In a meta-analysis of the low-order  conscientiousness-related traits that predict health outcomes it was found that conventionality, defined as a propensity to adhere to society’s norms, was most  strongly related  to a healthy life style [Robert et al. 2005]. According to another review of literature, conscientiousness was strongly correlated with the propensity to adhere to normative adult social roles, such as creating a family, investing in a career, or volunteering  [Lodi-Smith and Roberts 2007 ].

The second personality trait which may affect political behavior is openness to democratic societies. As being interested in astronomy, art or history it can reflect  a general interest in learning and be a sign of the breadth  and depth of a person’s mental  life. There is abundant openness to experience is related to in political issues. Interest in current event s, engagement in news-seeking activities, and current event s knowledge are all predicted by intellectual openness [ Hambrick  et al, 2008]  and openness to experience [Beier and Ackerman  2001 ]. In another study, the effect of openness on six out of ten political activities disappears when introducing controls for political knowledge and internal efficacy [Mondak et al, 2010], suggesting that these are mediation mechanisms. It is hypothesized that the positive effect of openness  on voter turnout and protest participation is mediated by interest in politics [H3] and political efficacy [H4].

Extraversion is positively  related  to participation in group-oriented political activities, but while some authors have found that it is unrelated to acts that do not require interaction such as voting or wearing stickers [Mondak and Halperin 2008]. Thus it is unclear if extraversion is linked to turnout  but if so, the exact predictor of protest  participation in Venezuela but not in Uruguay, suggesting that this effect may be context specific [Mondak et al, 2011]. 

The first likely link between extraversion and participation is through internal political efficacy. The optimistic and confident character of extraverts produces higher levels  of general personal efficacy, I,e. the belief  that a person  can produce  desired results by her actions, and internal political efficacy in particular.

The second link is through social networks.  Mobilization request that  circulate in social networks are particularly important to explain participation  in protest  activities. Mobilization efforts are targeted  at potential  protesters  and they are crucial to turn them  into actual protesters.

The personality trait of agreeableness  has also been related to political behavior in various ways, though there are competing contradictory expectations on its impact on political engagement , participation, and voter turnout. Agreeable people participate more in local politics and in such activities as attending meetings, signing petitions or contacting officials [Mondak and Halperin 2008]. However, Bekkers  [2005] finds out that in spite of the fact that people who report having more empathetic concerns are more likely to volunteer in political and non-political organizations,agreeableness does not have an independent effect on volunteering. On the other hand, aggressive people vote more frequently in Britain [Denny and Doyle 2008]. The relationship vanishes when controlling for political interest, which suggests that any effects are mediated by a negative relationship between agreeableness and interest in politics. In the US agreeableness is contingent upon the degree of conflict and visibility of the action. Sometimes it is possible to find a policy that is beneficial to all members of a community whereas in other occasions there are conflicting interest [Mansbridge 1980]. Agreeable people may be happy to participate in common affairs that enhance the well-being of the community but they may want to avoid conflictual situations. As long as voting is secret, this political act is not highly confrontational and visible. Therefore, we  don’t expect agreeableness to affect voter turnout. On the contrary, protest participation has varying degrees of confrontation and visibility.

Finally, there are contradictory or weak expectations when considering the link between  the last of the Big Five factors and voter turnout. Neuroticism is mostly related to variables such as ideology, economic evaluation, opinionation, and  dogmatism—which could have both positive and negative effects on ideology but not necessarily on turnout or participation itself [Mondak and Halperin 2008]

Age and sex are well –known predictors of participation, which are casually prior but related to personality. Most of the change in personality traits and profiles happens  before reaching full adulthood and after age 30 there is remarkable stability. the main predictors iof political participation as identified by the previous literature as political interest, internal efficacy, political knowledge, and political discussion. Discussion is particularly is important to explain protest, while closeness to a political party and thinking that voting is a civic duty are specific predictors of voter turnout.

 CONCLUSION

 It has been  proposed that the effects of personality are fully mediated by the core predictors of participation identified by the previous research, such as political interest, internal efficacy and the like, this clearly the case. All the predicted  indirect relationships were supported. In addiction, agreeableness only has a negative effect on participation in activities that imply confrontation, such as illegal protest. In spite of being indirect, the effects of personality traits on political participation are not negligible in magnitude. The total effects of the examined traits have at least have the size of some of the stronger and better established predictors of political participation such as internal political efficacy or age. Personality is thus important to understand why some  people participate in politics while others do not. The idea that personality affects  participation indirectly makes it particularly necessary to carefully outline theoretically grounded expectations on what is the exact link between each personality trait, each predictor of participation, and each participation activity. Using appropriate models and sensible specifications is crucial to estimate the effect of personality on political behavior.