Personality and Voter Attitudes Where Politics Is Structured Around Conflict

• In Event: Personality and Predispositions

Abstract

The relationship between personality and political attitudes has been studied extensively in recent years. Basic personality traits, often captured by the Five-Factor Model (“Big Five”), have been shown to predict numerous political behaviors and attitudes, such as political participation, ideology, and policy preferences. However, these patterns are largely documented in democracies whose politics are divided along economic and social liberal-conservative ideologies. Existing theoretical perspectives, too, focus on how specific traits lead individuals to be more or less liberal or conservative on this axis. By contrast, we know far less about how personality traits operate when the major ideological fault lines are defined by other issues. In this paper, we examine the relationship between personality traits, political orientation, and policy preferences in Israel, where the central Left-Right ideological dimension is structured around conflict and peace. Using original survey data with an expanded personality questionnaire, our paper outlines the similarities and differences in these relationships compared to past findings from systems with ideological sorting by economic/social issues. The paper provides a fuller understanding of the ways by which personality traits influence political outcomes across different ideological contexts and raise new questions about how basic personality characteristics influence the domestic politics of conflict and threat.

Authors

• Naama Rivlin-Angert

• Alon Yakter, Tel Aviv University

• Lior Sheffer, Tel Aviv University