Levels of Personality Traits and the Relationship with Political Trust

• In Event: Trust & Politics

Abstract

What makes individuals trust political institutions? Political science scholarship has found that personality traits matter for political attitudes and behavior, but surprisingly contradictory findings have been made for political trust. Subcategories of personality traits, such as sense of duty or cautiousness have been central for theory building but empirical testing is missing. This is concerning as the use of broader categories might erroneously find no relationship if subcategories' cancel each other out, or worse, if inaccurate measurements contribute to the contradictory findings. I use a representative survey of the population in the Netherlands, which includes a longer and validated measure of personality traits to test if it is necessary to divide personality traits further. In other words, I explore if applying the lower levels of abstraction, such as items or facets will improve the explanation of the variation in political trust, or if the standard approach to use the broad personality traits such as extraversion, and conscientiousness suffice. I find that subcategories within each trait significantly predict political trust, but that categories within the same trait sometimes cancels each other out which can explain the previous contradictory findings. This study contributes to the personality psychology literature and political trust literature by explaining how personality traits affect political trust. Future studies on personality traits therefore need to clarify which subcategories are used as this can affect the magnitude and direction of personality effects.

Author

• Felicia Robertson, Luleå University of Technology