Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships Across Issue Domains and Political Contexts

Abstract

Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.

Full text

American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1 February 2010
doi:10.1017/S0003055410000031
Personality and Political Attitudes:
Relationships across Issue Domains and Political Contexts
ALAN S. GERBER, GREGORY A. HUBER, DAVID DOHERTY,
and CONOR M. DOWLING Yale University
SHANG E. HA Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct
relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however,
to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across
issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this
study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential
effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine
how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains
and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding
personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social
attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income
in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary
substantially between white and black respondents.
The ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus was
an early student of human personality. His char-
acter sketches, which depict people in their pub-
lic and private dealings, underscore the essential in-
sight of modern personality research: behaviors across
what might at first seem like unrelated domains are
correlated, and behavioral patterns can be explained
by reference to underlying personality types (Gosling
2008). In recent years, personality psychologists have
refined our understanding of personality and have
reached a working consensus that personality traits can
be comprehensively conceptualized and reliably mea-
sured in terms of five traits (the Big Five): Agreeable-
ness, Openness (to Experience), Emotional Stability
(sometimes referred to by its inverse, Neuroticism),
Conscientiousness, and Extraversion.1
Alan S. Gerber is Professor, Department of Political Science
and Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, 77
Prospect Street, PO Box 208209, New Haven, CT 06520-8209
(alan.gerber@yale.edu).
Gregory A. Huber is Associate Professor, Department of Political
Science and Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University,
77 Prospect Street, PO Box 208209, New Haven, CT 06520-8209
(gregory.huber@yale.edu).
David Doherty is Postdoctoral Associate, Institution for Social
and Policy Studies, Yale University, 77 Prospect Street, PO Box
208209, New Haven, CT 06520-8209 (david.doherty@yale.edu).
Conor M. Dowling is Postdoctoral Associate, Institution for So-
cial and Policy Studies, Yale University, 77 Prospect Street, PO Box
208209, New Haven, CT 06520-8209 (conor.dowling@yale.edu).
Shang E. Ha is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Sci-
ence, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 3413 James
Hall, Brooklyn, NY 11210 (sha@brooklyn.cuny.edu).
We thank John Bullock, James Fowler, Sam Gosling, the anony-
mous reviewers, and the coeditor for comments on earlier versions.
This research was funded by Yale’s Center for the Study of American
Politics and Institution for Social and Policy Studies.
1Critics of Big Five research typically point to the limitations of
dispositional traits (defined later in the article) as a way of under-
standing personality, rather than criticizing the notion that the Big
Five offer an appropriate, comprehensive way of measuring disposi-
tional traits (e.g., McAdams 1995).
Individual personality is shaped by experience—fam-
ily dynamics, cultural forces, work experiences, and
educational experiences. However, a great deal of ev-
idence indicates that substantial variation in founda-
tional personality dispositions such as the Big Five are
stable from very early in life. There is evidence that
these dispositional traits have some genetic basis (e.g.,
Bouchard 1997; Plomin et al. 1990; Van Gestel and Van
Broeckhoven 2003) and are quite stable through the
life cycle (Caspi, Roberts, and Shiner 2005; Costa and
McCrae 1992; Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann 2003).2
These personality differences affect how individuals
respond to the stimuli they encounter in their environ-
ment. As such, personality traits can likely be viewed
as predating, rather than being caused by, social and
political influences, offering an opportunity to exam-
ine how fundamental, enduring personality differences
affect an array of social outcomes, including political
attitudes and behaviors.
Research finds that Big Five traits can explain sub-
stantial amounts of variation in a variety of opinions,
behaviors, and outcomes. For example, Borghans et al.
(2008) report that the predictive power of dispositional
traits “equals or exceeds the predictive power of cog-
nitive traits for schooling, occupational choice, wages,
health behaviors, teenage pregnancy, and crime” out-
comes (1006). Others have found that these traits af-
fect outcomes such as behavior in economic games
(Ben-Ner, Kramera, and Levy 2008; Koole, Jager, and
van den Berg 2001), political tolerance (Marcus et al.
1995, ch. 8), job satisfaction (Hogan and Holland
2003; Salgado 1997), alcohol and tobacco consumption
(Paunonen and Ashton 2001), and physical and mental
health (Goodwin and Friedman 2006). Although the
Big Five personality traits have only recently begun to
2Cognitive ability is the only psychological trait that is more stable
through the life cycle than the Big Five (Caspi, Roberts, and Shiner
2005, 466–67).
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Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
receive attention in political science, existing evidence
suggests that they are significant predictors of political
outcomes such as ideology and turnout (Gerber et al.
2010b; Mondak and Halperin 2008). Indeed, the size
of the effects of these traits rivals those of canonical
predictors of political behavior that have been the sub-
ject of countless studies—such as education and income
(Gerber et al. 2010b).
In this article, we use a large national survey of reg-
istered voters conducted around the 2008 presidential
election to examine the relationships between disposi-
tional personality traits (the Big Five) and political at-
titudes. We utilize a theoretical framework for studying
how personality affects political attitudes and behav-
ior. Building on recent work in psychology, we argue
that political attitudes should be thought of as charac-
teristic adaptations—“middle-level units”—that are the
product of essential dispositional traits and environ-
mental factors (McCrae and Costa 1999, 145; also see
McAdams and Pals 2006). McCrae and Costa (1996)
describe characteristic adaptations as “acquired skills,
habits, attitudes, and relationships that result from the
interaction of individual and environment” (69). In this
framework, political issues and ideological labels are
“stimuli” to which the Big Five traits shape responses.
Notably, the meaning of these stimuli is shaped by
environmental factors such as political context. One
important implication is that the link between person-
ality and political attitudes may be subtle; if political
stimuli are understood differently by different people,
then the observed relationship between personality
traits and political attitudes, such as ideology and is-
sue positions, should also vary. More generally, this ap-
proach provides a structure for developing hypotheses
regarding aggregate-level relationships between Big
Five traits and political outcomes, as well as expec-
tations for how environmental factors moderate these
relationships.
We apply the conceptual framework of characteristic
adaptations to guide our empirical investigation of the
links between personality and political attitudes. We
make two empirical contributions to the understand-
ing of how personality is related to political attitudes.
First, because for many people the reasons for pre-
ferring liberal social policies may be different from
the reasons for preferring liberal economic policies, we
investigate the effects of personality on self-reported
liberal-conservative ideology and both economic and
social policy opinions separately. We find that certain
personality traits explain liberal or conservative lean-
ings in both policy domains, providing an individual-
level explanation for “ideological constraint” (the em-
pirical finding that seemingly unrelated attitudes “go
together” in the political arena [Converse 1964]; see
also Jost 2006). We also show that the aggregate effects
of Big Five traits on overall self-reported ideology mask
important differences in the separate effects of these
personality traits on social and economic policy atti-
tudes, a finding that helps explain the apparent lack of
a relationship between, for example, the Big Five trait
of Agreeableness and overall self-reported ideology.
Our large national data set permits us to both resolve
inconsistent findings from previous research and iden-
tify even modest relationships between personality
traits and political attitudes.
Second, we use the characteristic adaptations frame-
work to formulate and test hypotheses about how
individual personality interacts with political and so-
cial context (environment) to produce political atti-
tudes. Because racial groups provide relatively clear
and identifiable differences in context in the United
States, we examine black–white differences in the re-
lationship between personality and political attitudes
as a test case. (We use the label “black” rather than
African American because the survey instrument we
employ asked respondents to self-categorize using this
label. On the difference between “black” and “African
American,” see Sigelman, Tuch, and Martin 2005.) Our
contribution is to both present hypotheses about how
context moderates these relationships and empirically
investigate these hypotheses. We find support for our
expectations. For example, Conscientiousness and
Emotional Stability are more strongly associated with
conservative economic views among white Ameri-
cans than among black Americans. Overall, our find-
ings provide evidence that although dispositional traits
shape how individuals respond to political stimuli, be-
cause the social meanings of political stimuli (e.g., pol-
icy proposals) vary across environments (political con-
text), so too do the relationships between Big Five traits
and characteristic adaptations (i.e., political attitudes).
The remainder of this article is organized as fol-
lows. We begin by describing the Big Five traits in
more detail, addressing how these traits were iden-
tified and how they differ from other psychological
characteristics—such as Right-Wing Authoritarianism
(RWA)—that have received substantial attention in
political research. Next we convey our expectations
regarding the relationships between Big Five traits and
political attitudes. We also discuss how interpretations
of stimuli such as ideological labels likely vary across
racial groups and describe our expectations regarding
how these varying interpretations might lead individ-
uals with similar dispositional traits to different char-
acteristic adaptations (ideologies and issue attitudes).
We then describe our data and presentour analysis. We
conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.
DISPOSITIONAL TRAITS—THE BIG FIVE
The Big Five personality dimensions were identified
through lexical analysis. The lexical approach rests
on the notion that “most of the socially-relevant and
salient personality characteristics have become en-
coded in the natural language” (John and Srivastava
1999, 103). In essence, we are able to make meaning-
ful judgments about the most fundamental aspects of
what people (including ourselves) are like, and our
language includes an array of words that allow us to
effectively express those judgments. Lexical analysis
involves gathering a set of descriptors that might be
used to describe enduring personality characteristics.
Individuals are then asked to rate how well each trait
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
describes themselves or a peer. These ratings are then
factor-analyzed to identify clusters of descriptors that
tap the same underlying dimensions of personality.
Early research was groundbreaking in applying and
refining the method, but was constrained by limita-
tions in computing resources (e.g., Allport and Odbert
1936; Cattell 1943). Despite these early limitations,
however, evidence that core personality traits are orga-
nized along five underlying factors emerged over time
(John and Srivastava 1999, 105). These five traits are
described by John and Srivastava (1999, 121) as follows:
Extraversion implies an energetic approach to the social
and material world and includes traits such as sociability,
activity, assertiveness, and positive emotionality. Agree-
ableness contrasts a prosocial and communal orientation
toward others with antagonism and includes traits such
as altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, and modesty. Con-
scientiousness describes socially prescribed impulse con-
trol that facilitates task- and goal-directed behavior, such
as thinking before acting, delaying gratification, following
norms and rules, and planning, organizing, and prioritizing
tasks. [Emotional Stability describes even-temperedness
and] contrasts ...with negative emotionality, such as feel-
ing anxious, nervous, sad, and tense....Openness to Expe-
rience (versus closed-mindedness) describes the breadth,
depth, originality, and complexity of an individual’s mental
and experiential life. (bold added for emphasis; italics in
original)
The Big Five are core dispositional personality
traits—“stable individual level differences in people’s
motivational reactions to circumscribed classes of en-
vironmental stimuli” (Denissen and Penke 2008, 1286).
Over the past several decades, researchers have found
that the Five-Factor Model (Big Five) appears robust
to variation in samples, types of raters, and method-
ological variations (John and Srivastava 1999, 106).
Although researchers still contest exactly how to label
the Big Five dimensions (e.g., Saucier 1994; Trapnell
1994), the strength and robustness of findings from
research using the Big Five has led to a great deal
of enthusiasm. Costa and McCrae describe the Big
Five as “the Christmas tree on which findings of sta-
bility, heritability, consensual validation, cross-cultural
invariance, and predictive utility are hung like orna-
ments” (Costa and McCrae 1993, as cited in McCrae
and Costa 1999, 139).
It is important to be clear about the distinctions be-
tween these Big Five traits and characteristic adapta-
tions. As should be plain from the traits’ descriptions,
the Big Five are basic and general orientations. They
are commonly thought of as “core” personality traits
(Asendorpf and van Aken 2003)3because they “are
based on genetic differences and/or early childhood
experiences, with limited susceptibility to social and
contextual influences later in life” (Ekehammar and
Akrami 2007, 900; see also, Bouchard and Loehlin
2001; Plomin and Caspi 1999). They are therefore the-
3Importantly, psychologists (Asendorpf and van Aken 2003;
McAdams and Pals 2006; McCrae and Costa 1996) consider the Big
Five to be causally prior to characteristic adaptations such as RWA.
orized to be causally prior to traits that are influenced
by both core personality traits and contextual factors,
which are instead often referred to as “characteristic
adaptations” (McAdams and Pals 2006; McCrae and
Costa 1996; Olver and Mooradian 2003). These charac-
teristic adaptations, that is, individual-level differences
“contextualized in time, situations and social roles”
(McAdams and Pals 2006, 208; also see McCrae and
Costa 1994, 1996) encompass an array of aspects of
human individuality such as values, attitudes (including
political attitudes such as ideology), expectations about
one’s role in society, and personal goals (McAdams and
Pals 2006; McCrae and Costa 2003). In the McAdams
and Pals model, these characteristic adaptations, such
as RWA and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; a
measure of group-based discrimination), are a product
of dispositional traits, such as the Big Five (see Akrami
and Ekehammar 2006; Ekehammar et al. 2004), and the
environment (see Sibley and Duckitt 2008). As such,
although some of the adaptations are also quite stable,
they are shaped in part by context and may also change
in response to contextual changes. To our knowledge,
however, the only study to consider such contextual
differences in the relationships between Big Five traits
and political attitudes is Sibley and Duckitt’s (2008)
meta-analysis of the effects of Big Five traits on SDO,
RWA, and prejudice in European and North American
samples.4
There is an extensive and important body of work
examining the relationship between a variety of po-
litical attitudes and other characteristic adaptations.
These adaptations include, among others, RWA (e.g.,
Adorno et al. 1950; Altemeyer 1996; Ekehammar
et al. 2004; Feldman 2003; Feldman and Stenner 1997;
Hetherington and Weiler 2009; Stenner 2005), SDO
(e.g., Ekehammar et al. 2004; Sidanius and Pratto 1999;
Sidanius, Pratto, and Bobo 1996), Racial Resentment
(e.g., Feldman and Huddy 2005; Henry and Sears 2002;
Kinder and Mendelberg 2000; Kinder and Sanders
1996; Kinder and Sears 1981; Sniderman and Carmines
1997), and core values (e.g., Goren 2001, 2005; Jacoby
2006). Our work contributes to this research by examin-
ing (1) how basic dispositional traits—arguably formed
prior to these characteristic adaptations—shape polit-
ical attitudes (another characteristic adaptation) and
(2) how the effects of Big Five traits vary across clearly
identified contexts.
THE BIG FIVE AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES
A number of previous studies have documented re-
lationships between Big Five traits and political atti-
tudes in U.S. samples. A review of that research ap-
pears in Table 1, which summarizes findings about
the relationship between the individual traits and (1)
self-reported liberal/conservative ideology, as well as
4Sibley and Duckitt (2008) find that Conscientiousness is a stronger
predictor of SDO and RWA in European samples than in North
American samples, whereas Neuroticism (the inverse of Emotional
Stability) is more strongly related to prejudice in North American
samples.
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Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
TABLE 1. Summary of Relationships between the Big Five and Ideology and Policy Attitudes in U.S. Samples
Ideology (Liberalism) Economic Policy (Liberalism) Social Policy (Liberalism)
Outcome
Analysis Aggregate Groups Aggregate Groups Aggregate Groups
Number of studies Multiple N/A (no studies) One, Carney et al.
(2008) [
N
=536
undergraduates]
N/A (no studies) One, Carney et al.
(2008) [
N
=536
undergraduates]
N/A (no studies)
National sample? One, Carney et al.
(2008) [
N
=
17,103 18–25
year olds]
N/A (no studies) N/A (no studies) N/A (no studies) N/A (no studies) N/A (no studies)
Trait Observed Relationship (With Notable Exceptions)
Conscientiousness −†N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies) −N/A (no studies)
Openness +†N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies) +N/A (no studies)
Agreeableness None†(– in [A]) N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies)
Emotional stability None†(– in
[A,B,C]) N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies)
Extraversion None†N/A (no studies) None N/A (no studies) −N/A (no studies)
Note
: Table includes published work that examines the relationship between the Big Five and ideology and policy attitudes in U.S. samples. See text for complete list of citations.
None =Statistically insignificant relationships (
p
>.05). +=Positive and statistically significant relationship between trait and liberal attitudes (
p
<.05). – =Negative and statistically
significant relationship between trait and liberal attitudes (
p
<.05).
†Indicates relationship observed in more than 3 studies. Exceptions noted are in these articles: [A] Carney et al. (2008); [B] Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann (2003); [C] Mondak and
Halperin (2008).
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
both (2) liberal/conservative economic policy attitudes
(e.g., beliefs about size of government, redistribution,
and risk sharing) and (3) liberal/conservative social pol-
icy attitudes (e.g., attitudes on issues such as abortion,
gay marriage, and the role of religion in public life).5
In addition, Table 1 reports whether the relationships
between Big Five traits and these characteristic adapta-
tions have been studied across contexts (i.e., for specific
groups) and in national samples. We note two impor-
tant gaps in this literature.
First, although there are several studies of the overall
relationship between the Big Five and self-reported
ideology, there is only a single published study that
examines the relationship between the Big Five and
economic and social policy attitudes. That pioneering
study by Carney et al. (2008) employs a sample of un-
dergraduates (N<600) from a single university who
participated in a survey for course credit and finds that
Openness is associated with social liberalism and Ex-
traversion is associated with social conservatism. They
also find a weak relationship between Conscientious-
ness and social conservatism. The relative lack of at-
tention to different policy domains is surprising, both
because attitudes are not obviously related across is-
sue domains and also because the sources of beliefs in
these domains are themselves important. In addition,
because overall ideology likely builds on one’s beliefs
about both economic and social policy (with a relative
weighting of these dimensions that may vary across
individuals), our understanding of overall ideological
orientation must build on knowledge of what under-
girds opinions in particular domains.
Second, no published studies have explored
whether differences in the political or social environ-
ment/context alter the relationship between the Big
Five (or other core dispositional traits) and these polit-
ical attitudes.6The Big Five is seen in psychological the-
ory as causally prior to attitudes and other characteris-
tic adaptations. Therefore, showing that the mapping of
Big Five traits to these political attitudes is context de-
pendent demonstrates that core personality differences
across individuals are not direct sources of political
beliefs, but rather that these core dispositional traits
shape the responses to stimuli that will have different
meanings in different contexts. Thus, the relationship
between the Big Five and political attitudes will not be
context independent, but instead will vary with features
of the political and social environment. To illustrate
the logic of this argument, consider the trait of Open-
ness, which is associated with willingness to challenge
5A complete description of how we code economic and social pol-
icy measures appears in the next section. Jost (2006, 654) instead
identifies two dimensions of ideology: “attitudes toward inequality,”
which partially encompasses what we label economic attitudes, and
“attitudes toward social change versus tradition,” which we label
social policy attitudes. See also Feldman and Johnston (2009) on the
two-dimensional nature of ideology.
6A related, but distinct literature, addresses the question of whether
situational factors (e.g., priming of mortality salience [Landau et al.
2004; McCann 1997], personal threat [Feldman and Stenner 1997;
Stenner 2005], and emotional cues [Brader 2006; Marcus et al. 1995])
affect the importance of individual-level differences (e.g., RWA) in
explaining behavior and opinions.
and question existing conventions and assumptions.
Among individuals in homogenously conservative so-
cial groups, this tendency to question existing norms
is likely to be associated with liberalism. In contrast,
among those in homogenously liberal groups, this trait
may incline people toward conservatism. We are un-
aware of any empirical effort to investigate whether the
relationship between personality and political attitudes
varies across population groups.
We build on the existing research to generate hy-
potheses about the aggregate (or average) effect of
Big Five traits on both overall ideology and attitudes in
these two policy domains. Given our theoretical frame-
work, which points to the possibility that the relation-
ship between personality and political attitudes varies
across context, we note that, as in prior research, our
hypotheses for the “typical” American necessarily as-
sume a dominant common political context or environ-
ment that not all survey respondents may experience.
Such a concern motivates our second exercise in this
section: identifying contextual differences for citizens
in different racial groups in the United States, and using
that variation to hypothesize about how these contexts
alter the meaning of political stimuli and, therefore, the
mapping of Big Five traits to political attitudes.
Aggregate Predictions: Personality and
Overall, Economic, and Social Ideology
Here, we present our specific hypotheses about the av-
erage effects of Big Five traits on overall ideology and
in the economic and social policy domains. Building
on the framework discussed previously, which argued
that Big Five traits affect how individuals respond to
political stimuli, our theorizing focuses on how per-
sonality traits likely affect responses to these different
stimuli. To organize our presentation, we consider each
Big Five trait separately. As a reminder, the results of
previous research using U.S. samples are summarized
in Table 1.
We begin with Conscientiousness, which previous
research has found is related to overall conservative
ideology (Carney et al. 2008; Gosling, Rentfrow, and
Swann 2003; Mondak and Halperin 2008; Stenner 2005,
ch. 6; but see Alford and Hibbing 2007 and Mehrabian
1996) and voting for conservative/right-wing candi-
dates (Barbaranelli et al. 2007; Caprara, Barbaranelli,
and Zimbardo 1999; Caprara et al. 2006; Rentfrow
et al. 2009; Schoen and Schumann 2007). Given that
those who are more Conscientious exhibit socially
prescribed impulse control and are more likely to
adhere to norms and rules (John and Srivastava
1999; Jost 2006; Jost et al. 2003), this is not surpris-
ing: identifying as a conservative involves supporting
traditional norms in both the economic (e.g., work
hard and you will get ahead [Devine 1972; Feldman
1988; Feldman and Zaller 1992; Goren 2005;
Lipset 1979; McClosky and Zaller 1984]) and so-
cial (e.g., defend traditional family values [Goren
2005; McCann 1997]) policy domains. For these
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Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
reasons, we expect Conscientiousness to predict over-
all, economic, and social policy conservatism.
Next, consider the trait of Openness (to Experience),
which has consistently been associated with identifying
as liberal (Carney et al. 2008; Gosling, Rentfrow, and
Swann 2003; Jost et al. 2003; McCrae 1996; Mehrabian
1996; Mondak and Halperin 2008; Riemann et al.
1993; Stenner 2005, ch. 6; Van Hiel, Kossowska, and
Mervielde 2000; Van Hiel and Mervielde 2004) and
left-party voting (Barbaranelli et al. 2007; Caprara,
Barbaranelli, and Zimbardo 1999; Caprara et al. 2006;
Rentfrow et al. 2009; Schoen and Schumann 2007)
in earlier research.7As suggested in prior research
demonstrating the link between Openness and
liberalism, those who are more open respond positively
to unconventional and complex stimuli (Neuberg and
Newsom 1993). It follows that this attraction to novelty
and tolerance for complexity encourage not only
overall liberalism, but also support for liberal social
and economic policies, which typically involve new pro-
grams or interventions that overturn existing practices.
Prior work has typically found no relationship
between Agreeableness and overall ideology (e.g.,
Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann 2003; Mehrabian 1996;
Mondak and Halperin 2008; Riemann et al. 1993).
However, Carney et al. (2008) do find Agreeableness
to be weakly associated with conservatism in their two
largest samples (N=1,826 and N=17,103). Agree-
able individuals are “prosocial and communal in ori-
entation,” and can be characterized by more specific
facets such as “altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, and
modesty” (John and Srivastava 1999, 121). This trait
may incline individuals to respond positively to liberal
economic policies because they see them as a means to
help others (see Graziano et al. 2007). Agreeable indi-
viduals may respond positively to liberal social policies
for similar reasons. However, it could also be the case
that a desire to maintain social harmony predisposes
Agreeable individuals to respond negatively to liberal
social policies (e.g., gay marriage, abortion) that may
upset existing and functioning communal relationships.
Given these potentially offsetting influences with re-
gard to social policy, we remain agnostic regarding the
associations between Agreeableness and both social
policy opinions and overall ideology.
Emotional Stability, which is associated with even-
temperedness and resilience (in contrast to being anx-
ious and tense), is sometimes found to be correlated
with conservative ideology (Carney et al. 2008; Gosling,
Rentfrow, and Swann 2003; Mondak and Halperin
2008) and voting for right parties (Barbaranelli et al.
2007). We therefore expect a similar association be-
tween Emotional Stability and self-identifying as a
conservative. In terms of economic policy opinions,
because they are more anxious and worry prone, we
7These recent findings concerning the relationships between Open-
ness and Conscientiousness and ideology comport with early work
on personality (e.g., Adorno et al. 1950; Bem 1970; Brown 1965;
Fromm 1947, 1964; Jaensch 1938; McClosky 1958; Tomkins 1963;
Wilson 1973; see Jost et al. 2003 for a meta-analysis of this early
research and Carney et al. 2008 for a discussion of the connections
between this early work and Big Five research).
expect those low on Emotional Stability to be more
likely to embrace liberal economic policies that create
“safety nets” and reduce exposure to market risks. The
likely relationship between Emotional Stability and
social policy attitudes is less clear. On the one hand,
those who are more Stable may be less threatened by
proposed changes to the social status quo. On the other
hand, greater emotionality may lead the less Stable to
identify with those who seek redress through social
interventions.
Finally, consider Extraversion, which prior research
has found is not related to ideological self-placement.
Extraverts exhibit positive emotionality and are socia-
ble, and although these motivations encourage polit-
ical participation (e.g., Gerber et al. 2010b; Mondak
and Halperin 2008; Vecchione and Caprara 2009) and
strong partisan attachments (Gerber et al. 2010a), there
seems little reason to believe that this trait itself en-
courages particular economic or social policy views,
although Carney et al. (2008) do find Extraversion to
be related to social conservatism in one of their samples
(detailed previously).
Context Effects
Although the previous section examined aggregate re-
lationships between dispositional traits and political
attitudes in the United States, here we focus on de-
veloping hypotheses about how these effects are likely
to vary across contexts (within the U.S.). Doing so re-
quires identifying some set of individuals for whom
we can make reasonable assumptions about how con-
textual factors affect the meaning of political stimuli.
Ideally, such assessments rest on a substantial body of
research rather than conjecture, and this group should
be defined based on characteristics that are not, them-
selves, caused by dispositional traits. In the United
States, we argue, one promising case for such an anal-
ysis of contextual effects is differences between black
and white Americans, an important subject in its own
right that has received substantial previous attention.
Previous research (as well as the data we use here)
consistently finds that, relative to whites, black Amer-
icans are, on average, more likely to identify as lib-
eral and hold more liberal economic policy opinions
(e.g., Jackman 1994; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Kinder
and Winter 2001; Tate 1994). Consistent with a shared
history of experienced racial discrimination (Dawson
1994, 1997; Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989;
Herring, Jankowski, and Brown 1999; Sellers et al.
1998), black Americans are more likely than white
Americans to express feelings of “linked fate” across
social classes (Dawson 1994, 2001; Gay and Tate 1998;
Jaynes and Williams 1989; Simien 2005; Tate 1994)
and to believe that economic differences are rooted
in racial discrimination and imbalances in resource al-
location (Jackman 1994; Kinder and Winter 2001). In
short, these data suggest that among black Americans,
liberal economic policy tends to be understood not as
redistributing to those who have made poor choices,
but instead as an obligation to those who are poor for
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
systematic reasons. Likewise, calling oneself a liberal
may have a different meaning among white Americans.
At the same time, black and white opinions do not
differ substantially on non-race-related social policy is-
sues (e.g., Lewis 2003; Wilcox 1990). The differences in
how black and white Americans understand economic
policies and ideological labels provide a way to specify
expectations regarding how the relationships between
dispositional traits and these political attitudes vary
across these groups.8
The personality trait Conscientiousness provides
an excellent case for understanding the relationships
among dispositional traits, contexts, and attitudes. Pre-
vious work has argued that the Conscientious are more
likely to be conservative because of their inclination to
be dutiful and follow prescribed social rules. Existing
research on attitudinal differences across racial groups
suggests, however, that what it means to be dutiful is
likely to be quite different for black and white Amer-
icans. We therefore conjecture that Conscientiousness
will be more strongly associated with overall and eco-
nomic conservatism among whites than among blacks
because Conscientious black Americans may see redis-
tributive policies (and being a liberal) as dutiful (e.g.,
helping those who are in bad circumstances through no
fault of their own) rather than as undermining social
norms (e.g., work hard and you will get ahead). We
do not have strong expectations about differences be-
tween black and white Americans with regard to social
policy because of the apparently small difference in
norms across racial groups.
Similarly, the effect of Openness to Experience,
which is associated with positive response to novel
ideas and experiences, may vary for overall ideol-
ogy and economic policy opinions across these racial
groups. To the extent that black Americans face more
homogenously liberal environments than whites, we
expect that Openness will be more strongly associated
with liberalism among whites than among blacks, for
whom questioning existing conventions may include
questioning a commitment to liberalism and liberal
economic policies. For the reasons outlined previously,
we do not have clear expectations about differences
with regard to social policy opinions.
The Big Five trait Agreeableness provides more
limited predictions with regard to context differences.
Agreeableness is associated with a communal orienta-
tion and broad feelings of warmth toward others, but it
is less clear why the relationships predicted previously
are likely to vary across groups. We do note that to the
extent that black Americans support liberal economic
policy for reasons other than empathy for the poor
(i.e., support for such policies is due to “linked fate”),
8It is not necessary for our argument that black Americans be
immersed in predominately black or liberal social environments,
but rather only that, on average, blacks are likely to understand
some political stimuli differently than whites. Prior research (e.g.,
on linked fate) suggests that such an assumption is warranted. Fur-
thermore, confirming the relative racial homogeneity of individual
environments, both residential locations (Massey and Denton 1993)
and social networks (e.g., McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001;
Sigelman et al. 1996) are often racially distinct.
economically liberal policies will not be interpreted in
these terms. Thus, the importance of Agreeableness
in promoting economic liberalism will likely be dimin-
ished for this group. We do not expect differences in
terms of the relationship between Agreeableness and
overall ideology or social policy opinions.
Our predictions with regard to the effects of differ-
ences in the trait Emotional Stability are similarly tar-
geted. If less stable individuals are economically liberal
because they are concerned about risks to economic
security, this effect will likely be mitigated for black
Americans to the extent that liberal economic policies
are not understood as a hedge against personal mis-
fortune. Put another way, if black Americans support
liberal economic policies to reduce racial inequality,
then their dispositional responses to risk may be largely
irrelevant. We have no clear expectations with regard
to overall ideological self-placement or social policy
opinions.
Finally, we have no strong expectations about how
the effect of Extraversion, which is associated with
social activity and positive emotions, will vary across
racial groups. If Extraversion predicts that social inter-
action and social environments are racially stratified,
then peer influence might induce different sets of at-
titudes across racial groups; however, this is causally
distinct from the argument that political stimuli have
different meanings in these groups that are relevant to
levels of Extraversion.
DATA AND ANALYSIS
The data for our analysis are drawn from the 2007–
2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP;
Jackman and Vavreck 2009). The CCAP is an Internet-
based survey of registered voters that uses a combina-
tion of sampling and matching techniques to account
for the fact that opt-in Internet survey respondents may
differ from the general population on factors such as
political interest. This process is designed to approxi-
mate a random digit dialing sample.9Our data come
from the baseline wave of the study conducted between
9The survey sample is constructed by first drawing a target pop-
ulation sample. This sample is based on the 2005–2007 American
Community Study (ACS), the November 2008 Current Population
Survey Supplement, and the 2007 Pew Religious Life Survey. Thus,
this target sample is representative of the general population on
a broad range of characteristics, including a variety of geographic
(state, region, metropolitan statistical area), demographic (age, race,
income, education, gender), and other measures (born-again sta-
tus, employment, interest in news, party identification, ideology, and
turnout). Polimetrix invited a sample of their opt-in panel of 1.4
million survey respondents to participate in the study. Invitations
were stratified based on race, gender, and battleground status, with an
oversample of nine battleground and early primary states (Florida,
Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Those who completed the survey
(approximately 2.5 times the target sample) were then matched to
the target sample using nearest-neighbor matching based on the
variables previously listed in parentheses. Finally, weights were cal-
culated to adjust the final sample to reflect the national public on
these demographic and other characteristics (including correcting for
the oversampling of battleground states). For more detailed infor-
mation on this type of survey and sampling technique, see Vavreck
and Rivers (2008). In concrete terms, the weighted CCAP sample
117

Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
TABLE 2. Summary Statistics for Model Variables
Variable Entire Sample Whites Blacks Hispanics Other Races
Self-reported ideology (−2=very cons.; 2 =very lib., −0.155 −0.235 0.167 0.102 −0.067
0=not sure) [1.1787] [1.1933] [1.0138] [1.1294] [1.2008]
Economic domain (mean 0, SD1, −conservative to 0.017 −0.037 0.291 0.166 −0.020
+liberal) [0.98] [1.0053] [0.8064] [0.865] [0.9997]
Social domain (mean 0, SD1, −conservative to −0.045 −0.061 −0.020 0.084 −0.066
+liberal) [0.9951] [1.0072] [0.9268] [0.9573] [1.0086]
Conscientiousness (0–1) 0.766 0.766 0.790 0.742 0.737
[0.2007] [0.1963] [0.2053] [0.2235] [0.2134]
Openness (0–1) 0.703 0.696 0.728 0.713 0.736
[0.1962] [0.1959] [0.199] [0.1952] [0.1851]
Agreeableness (0–1) 0.708 0.706 0.727 0.705 0.692
[0.1935] [0.1947] [0.1921] [0.1885] [0.1829]
Stability (0–1) 0.681 0.674 0.714 0.695 0.696
[0.225] [0.2256] [0.2219] [0.2254] [0.2129]
Extraversion (0–1) 0.516 0.518 0.506 0.505 0.530
[0.2476] [0.2496] [0.2394] [0.2416] [0.2434]
Female =10.494 0.497 0.498 0.482 0.463
[0.5] [0.5] [0.5003] [0.5] [0.4991]
White =10.763
[0.4252]
Black =10.115
[0.3195] N/A
Hispanic =10.079
[0.2693]
Other (Native American, Asian, mixed, other) =10.043
[0.2025]
Age (years) 47.706 49.042 44.453 41.219 44.596
[15.7558] [15.9888] [13.6685] [14.1046] [15.0537]
Age squared/100 25.241 26.607 21.627 18.977 22.149
[15.6728] [16.1568] [12.6764] [12.692] [14.3689]
Education (1 =no HS; 6 =postgrad) 3.414 3.376 3.559 3.470 3.595
[1.5272] [1.5283] [1.4546] [1.5752] [1.5736]
Income (1 ≤10k; 14 ≥150k; 15 =RF/missing) 8.588 8.672 7.906 8.440 9.197
[3.8466] [3.824] [3.8045] [3.9788] [3.8943]
Missing/RF: income 0.085 0.087 0.056 0.084 0.122
[0.2787] [0.2822] [0.2304] [0.2777] [0.327]
Observations 12472 10285 905 771 511
Note
: Standard deviations in brackets. Weighted analysis. Sample restricted to cases with valid observations for all variables.
December 17, 2007 and January 3, 2008. The full survey
includes 20,000 respondents. We restrict our sample to
respondents who participated in the baseline survey
and provided responses to all questions used to mea-
sure the Big Five (N=14,601). Of these, 2,129 (14.6%)
did not provide responses to all five measures of politi-
cal attitudes that serve as our dependent variables and
are therefore excluded from the analysis that follows.
We examine three measures as dependent variables
in our analysis. To ease interpretation, all are scored so
that more liberal opinions are larger values. (Summary
statistics for all model variables appear in Table 2, and
we use in our analysis appears similar in levels of political interest to
that found in the weighted 2008 American National Election Studies
(ANES) time-series survey. In the September wave of the CCAP, we
find that 55% of respondents are “very much” interested in politics
(variable =scap813, “How interested are you in politics?”). In the
ANES preelection survey, the comparable figure is 58% (variable =
V0830001b, “How interested are you in information about what’s go-
ing on in government and politics?” =Extremely or Very interested,
restricted to reported registered voters).
full question wording and scoring rules appear in the
Appendix.) The first is self-reported ideology based on
a measure that asked respondents to place themselves
on a 5-point scale ranging from “very liberal” to “very
conservative.” The second is economic policy opinions,
which is a standardized scale constructed from two
items, one soliciting opinions regarding the role of the
government in health care and the other asking about
support for raising taxes on those earning more than
$200,000 per year (r=0.59). The third is social policy
opinions, which is also a standardized scale constructed
from two items, one asking about abortion attitudes
and the other about support for civil unions (r=0.60).
Our primary independent variables of interest are
measures of Big Five personality dimensions. We use
the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) developed
by Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann (2003). The TIPI
asks respondents to report whether “I see myself as”
characterized by a series of 10 trait pairs using a 7-
point scale ordered from Disagree Strongly to Agree
Strongly. Each Big Five trait is captured by responses
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
to two trait pairs, with one trait pair for each trait
reverse scored to mitigate problems of acquiescence
bias. Responses to these 10 questions (see the Ap-
pendix) are used to score a respondent’s personality
on each of the Big Five traits. These scores are highly
correlated with those obtained from longer person-
ality batteries (Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann 2003,
Tables 6 & 9).10 ,11
In addition to the Big Five measures, we include
in all specifications measures of gender (indicator
for female), racial identification (indicators for white
[excluded category], black, Hispanic, and all other
identifications), and age (in years and squared to allow
for nonlinearity in the effect of age). Evidence link-
ing personality to educational attainment (Borghans
et al. 2008; Paunonen and Ashton 2001) and earnings
(Borghans et al. 2008) suggests that these variables
are at least partially endogenous to personality. For
this reason, we present specifications with and without
these measures. For education, we include six categor-
ical indicators to allow for nonlinearity (the excluded
category is some college attendance), and for income,
we employ a linear scale, with refusals coded as the
high point of the scale, as well as a separate indicator
variable for refusals.
We begin our analysis of the direct effect of per-
sonality traits on political attitudes with this model
specification:
DV =B0 +C∗Personality +D∗Controls
+F∗State Fixed Effects +e.(1)
The inclusion of state fixed effects in Equation (1)
allows us to account for any unmeasured character-
istic of respondents, or their environment, that may
arbitrarily vary across states. We also cluster standard
errors at the state level to account for the fact that ob-
servations within a state are geographically correlated
and may reflect a common (unobserved) environment.
To account for variation in the characteristics of those
who completed the survey, as well as the oversample
of battleground states, we employ weights to obtain
representative population estimates. Finally, because
our dependent variable is censored for both high and
low values, we employ two-limit Tobit models, with the
10 The correlations among Big Five traits are reported in Table A1
in the Appendix.
11 Correlations between the two items in each of the Big Five scales
range from 0.23 (Agreeableness) to 0.47 (Stability). We note that
the TIPI was not designed with the intent of achieving high inter-
item correlations. Rather, it was designed to (1) be brief; (2) achieve
high test–retest reliability (as well as reliability between self- and
peer-administered ratings); and (3) yield measures that are highly
correlated with those obtained using much longer batteries (the cor-
relations between TIPI measures and the 44-item Big Five Inventory
[BFI] range from 0.65 to 0.87; correlations with measures from the
much longer, 240-item NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (PI-R)
range from 0.56 to 0.68). Therefore, because each question in the
TIPI is designed to measure part of a broader Big Five trait, inter-
item correlations between the two items used to measure each trait
are less informative of the items’ reliability (Gosling 2009; more
generally, see Kline 2000 and Woods and Hampson 2005 on the
misleading nature of alphas calculated for scales with only a small
number of items).
upper and lower censoring values set at the observed
sample minimums and maximums.12
For our analysis of the differential effect of person-
ality across groups, we extend the Equation (1) speci-
fication by interacting personality with racial category
indicators. Thus, we estimate
DV =B0 +C∗Personality +D∗Controls
+G∗Race∗Personality
+F∗State Fixed Effects +e,(2)
where Race is a vector of indicator variables (with
white as the excluded category) that are interacted
with each of the personality measures. This allows us
to test whether the effect of personality is different for
different races (although the hypotheses we offer in
this article only pertain to black Americans).
One potential concern with the Equation (2) specifi-
cation is that it assumes that the associations between
personality and attitudes vary only across race (e.g.,
they do not also vary across gender groups) and that
these are the only associations that vary across racial
groups (e.g., the associations between gender and at-
titudes do not vary across races). To account for the
possibility of such relationships, we also present results
from specification (2):
DV =B0 +C∗Personality +D∗Controls +
G∗Race∗Personality +
H∗Personality∗Non-Race Controls +
I∗Race∗Non-Race Controls +
F∗State Fixed Effects +e,(2)
which includes all possible interactions between per-
sonality and the other controls as well as between race
and all other controls.
Results, Aggregate Effects
We begin by presenting the results of our aggregate
analysis of the effect of personality on opinions. Model
estimates appear in Table 3. We implement Equa-
tion (1), and present results without (odd-numbered
columns) and with (even-numbered columns) mea-
sures of education and income. Across dependent vari-
ables, we find that the results are similar for the spec-
ifications that do and do not include education and
income, and so we focus our discussion on the results
that include these measures. To simplify the presenta-
tion of results, Figure 1 plots the effect of a two stan-
dard deviation (SD) increase in each personality trait
on the dependent variables shown in Table 3 (for the
even column specifications, error bars are 95% confi-
dence intervals).13 The figure also presents comparable
estimates of the relationships between education (the
12 Analyses employing ordered logit for the categorical dependent
variable (self-reported ideology) and OLS for the issue attitude
scales is available on request and yields similar results.
13 The plotted figures are for the effect of the change in the indepen-
dent variable on the latent index (XB) underlying the Tobit analysis.
If a change in the latent index moved an individual beyond the
119

Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
TABLE 3. Aggregate Effect of Personality on Ideological Self-placement and Economic and
Social Policy Attitudes
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Self-reported
Ideology Economic Policy
Attitudes Social Policy Attitudes
(−2=Very Cons.;
2=Very Lib., 0 =Not
Sure)
(Mean 0, SD1,
−Conservative to
+Liberal)
(Mean 0, SD1,
−Conservative to
+Liberal)
Conscientiousness (0–1) −0.858 −0.842 −0.620 −0.551 −0.616 −0.637
[0.100]∗∗ [0.100]∗∗ [0.097]∗∗ [0.094]∗∗ [0.073]∗∗ [0.076]∗∗
Openness (0–1) 1.770 1.680 1.189 1.214 1.487 1.355
[0.079]∗∗ [0.080]∗∗ [0.125]∗∗ [0.118]∗∗ [0.070]∗∗ [0.067]∗∗
Agreeableness (0–1) 0.048 0.051 0.585 0.511 −0.331 −0.315
[0.135] [0.136] [0.134]∗∗ [0.135]∗∗ [0.109]∗∗ [0.110]∗∗
Stability (0–1) −0.553 −0.587 −1.085 −0.952 −0.187 −0.284
[0.072]∗∗ [0.079]∗∗ [0.105]∗∗ [0.109]∗∗ [0.077]∗[0.079]∗∗
Extraversion (0–1) −0.176 −0.163 −0.381 −0.286 −0.081 −0.101
[0.083]∗[0.083]∗[0.082]∗∗ [0.082]∗∗ [0.046] [0.045]∗
Female =10.295 0.304 0.343 0.282 0.144 0.176
[0.033]∗∗ [0.032]∗∗ [0.033]∗∗ [0.031]∗∗ [0.028]∗∗ [0.028]∗∗
Black =10.466 0.434 0.499 0.442 −0.010 −0.031
[0.050]∗∗ [0.048]∗∗ [0.063]∗∗ [0.060]∗∗ [0.051] [0.046]
Hispanic =10.292 0.295 0.344 0.315 −0.039 −0.014
[0.113]∗∗ [0.108]∗∗ [0.074]∗∗ [0.072]∗∗ [0.102] [0.096]
Other (Native American, 0.097 0.092 0.027 0.032 −0.162 −0.169
Asian, mixed, other) =1[0.076] [0.077] [0.093] [0.092] [0.070]∗[0.072]∗
Age (years) −0.029 −0.026 −0.002 0.012 −0.007 −0.008
[0.007]∗∗ [0.007]∗∗ [0.007] [0.007] [0.005] [0.005]
Age squared 100 0.020 0.018 −0.005 −0.018 0.002 0.004
[0.007]∗∗ [0.007]∗∗ [0.006] [0.006]∗∗ [0.005] [0.005]
Educ. <HS −0.173 −0.092 −0.337
[0.114] [0.117] [0.096]∗∗
Educ. =HS −0.127 0.025 −0.230
[0.039]∗∗ [0.045] [0.031]∗∗
Educ. =2-year college −0.054 −0.040 0.018
[0.057] [0.048] [0.059]
Educ. =college 0.156 −0.043 0.179
[0.050]∗∗ [0.043] [0.045]∗∗
Educ. =postgrad 0.553 0.325 0.466
[0.038]∗∗ [0.055]∗∗ [0.041]∗∗
Income (1 ≤10k; 14 ≥−0.025 −0.075 −0.001
150k; 15 =RF/missing) [0.005]∗∗ [0.005]∗∗ [0.006]
Missing/RF: income −0.037 0.367 −0.089
[0.063] [0.056]∗∗ [0.057]
Constant 0.395 0.533 0.006 0.218 0.360 0.463
[0.165]∗[0.178]∗∗ [0.196] [0.196] [0.164]∗[0.171]∗∗
Observations 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472
Left censored obs. 1,964 1,964 2,265 2,265 1,094 1,094
Right censored obs. 1,303 1,303 3,067 3,067 2,023 2,023
State fixed effects? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Note
: Tobit coefficients with robust standard errors (clustered by state) in brackets. Weighted analysis. Sample restricted to cases with
valid observations for all variables. State fixed effects not reported to save space.
∗Significant at 5%.
∗∗ Significant at 1%, two-tailed tests.
change from a high school diploma to a 4-year college
degree) and income (a two SD increase) and the out-
comes. As a reminder, the overall ideology measure
observed limits of the survey measure, the effect on the individual’s
predicted opinion would be smaller.
has a SD of about 1.2, whereas both the economic and
social policy attitude measures have SDs of 1.
Consistent with previous work, we find that Con-
scientiousness is associated with holding conservative
opinions. Importantly, as predicted, this relationship
extends to both economic and social policy opinions.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, a two SD increase in
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
FIGURE 1. Aggregate Effect of Changes in Model Variables on Ideology and Policy Attitudes
Note
: Plot is from even column specifications in Table 3. Marginal effects are for latent XB. Change in outcome based on 2 SD increase
in independent variable. Ideology ranges from −2to2(SD=1.2). Economic and Social Policy attitudes are mean =0, SD =1 scales.
Error bars mark 95% (2-tailed) confidence intervals.
Conscientiousness is associated with a 0.34 increase in
overall conservatism (about 0.29 SD) and a 0.22 and
0.26 increase, respectively, in economic and social pol-
icy conservatism. Comparing the magnitudes of these
effects to similar changes in income and education,
we see that these effects are relatively large. Although
increases in income have a larger effect on holding
conservative economic policy attitudes and increases in
education have a larger effect on holding liberal social
policy views, the remainder of the effects of Consci-
entiousness on these outcomes are larger in absolute
magnitude.
Our findings regarding Openness also comport with
prior research that finds an association between this
trait and liberal attitudes. Again, as predicted, we show
that this trait is associated with support for liberal eco-
nomic and social policies. These associations are quite
strong: a two SD increase in Openness is associated
with a 0.66 unit change in ideological self-placement
(0.56 SD), a 0.48 SD increase in economic liberalism,
and a 0.53 SD increase in social liberalism. The mag-
nitudes of these effects are larger than the effects of
either income or education.
We also find support for our hypotheses regard-
ing the associations between the remaining Big Five
traits and political attitudes. Consistent with some prior
research (e.g., Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann 2003;
Mehrabian 1996; Mondak and Halperin 2008; Riemann
et al. 1993), we do not find a relationship between
Agreeableness and overall self-reported political ide-
ology. However, our findings show that this null find-
ing masks countervailing effects of Agreeableness on
more specific attitudes. Specifically, we find that Agree-
ableness is associated with liberal economic attitudes
but is associated with conservative social attitudes (we
did not expect this later relationship). Although these
associations are modest in size, they are both clearly
different from zero (p<.01). This countervailing pat-
tern suggests that the inconsistent findings in previous
research may originate in context differences or mea-
surement issues (e.g., survey ordering effects) that may
make either social or economic concerns more salient
in particular surveys.
Next, we turn to Emotional Stability, which we pre-
dicted would be associated with overall and economic
conservatism. These expectations are confirmed, and
the magnitudes of the relationships between Emo-
tional Stability and both ideological self-placement and
economic policy opinions are comparable to the ef-
fects of education and income. We also observe that
Stability is associated with holding conservative social
policy attitudes, but this effect is relatively modest. (As
we noted previously, our expectations regarding this
relationship were mixed.)
Finally, we did not propose any directional hypothe-
ses about the relationships between Extraversion and
121

Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
TABLE 4A. Predicted and Observed Aggregate Relationship between Big Five Traits
and Ideology and Economic and Social Policy Attitudes
Self-reported Ideology Economic Policy Attitudes Social Policy Attitudes
Prediction Finding Prediction Finding Prediction Finding
Conscientiousness −Confirmed −Confirmed −Confirmed
Openness +Confirmed +Confirmed +Confirmed
Agreeableness None None +Confirmed None −
Stability −Confirmed −Confirmed None −
Extraversion None −None −None −(Some spec.)
Note
: Rows are Big Five personality traits, and columns are measures of political attitudes, all scaled so that positive values are
associated with more liberal opinions. Cells are the predicted relationship between the personality trait and the attitude, with +
indicating more liberal, −indicating more conservative, and none indicating no prediction. In finding columns, confirmed indicates
prediction is confirmed and +or −indicates statistically significant observed relationship when no prediction was offered.
TABLE 4B. Predicted and Observed Context-dependent Relationship between Big Five Traits
and Ideology and Economic and Social Policy Attitudes
Self-reported Ideology Economic Policy Attitudes Social Policy Attitudes
Prediction Finding Prediction Finding Prediction Finding
Conscientiousness B >W Confirmed B >W Confirmed None None
Openness W >B Confirmed W >B Confirmed (
p
values of
.07, .06, and .02) None W >B
Agreeableness None None W >B Not Confirmed/Weak
Support (
p
values of
.14, .13, and .33)
None None
Stability None None B >W Confirmed (
p
<.08 in
1 spec.) None None
Extraversion None None None B >W(
p
<.08 in
1 spec.) None None
Note
: Rows are Big Five personality traits, and columns are measures of political attitudes, all scaled so that positive values are
associated with more liberal opinions. Cells are the predicted difference in the relative effect of an increase in the personality trait and
the attitude for (B)lacks and (W)hites, with B >W indicating blacks will be more liberal, W >B indicating whites will be more liberal,
and none indicating no prediction. In finding columns, confirmed indicates prediction is confirmed and B >WorW>B indicates
statistically significant observed relationship when no prediction was offered.
political attitudes. However, we find that those who are
more Extraverted are somewhat more conservative on
each of the outcomes we examine.
Table 4A summarizes our hypotheses and the ob-
served relationships across the Big Five traits and the
measures of ideology and opinions. We presented nine
directional predictions about the relationship between
Big Five traits and opinions, and we find support for
each of them. In addition, in the six cases where we did
not offer predictions, we found consistent statistically
significant relationships in four of them. Agreeable-
ness and Stability are associated with social conser-
vatism, whereas Extraversion is associated with overall
and economic conservatism, and sometimes with social
conservatism.
The importance of these findings is twofold. First,
we confirm the association found in previous work
between Conscientiousness, Openness, and Emotional
Stability and overall ideological self-placement. We
also show that for each of these traits, the same di-
rectional relationship holds for both economic and so-
cial policy opinions (albeit with a much larger effect
of Stability on economic than social policy opinions).
A similar, if attenuated, pattern holds for Extraver-
sion (depending on specification), which has not been
associated with ideology or policy opinions in prior
research. Together, this pattern suggests that ideolog-
ical constraint, the tendency for an individual’s atti-
tudes on loosely related dimensions to be correlated,
may originate in underlying personality differences
that condition stimuli response. The second finding
is the counterbalancing effects of Agreeableness on
economic and social policy attitudes. As predicted, we
find that Agreeable individuals are more economically
liberal. We also find that they are somewhat more
socially conservative. Thus, our findings suggest that
Agreeableness has not been found to correlate with
overall ideological self-placement because Agreeable
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
individuals are pulled in opposite directions by their
economic and social policy attitudes.
In the previous analysis, we used education and in-
come to benchmark the size of the effects of Big Five
traits on ideology. It is also useful to evaluate these
magnitudes using attitudinal benchmarks. One of the
most important individual-level characteristics in po-
litical behavior research is Authoritarianism. Recent
scholarship often uses a set of five forced-choice items
about child-rearing values to measure this concept
(e.g., Hetherington and Weiler 2009; Stenner 2005).
Respondents are asked whether it is more important
for children, for example, to be obedient or self-reliant.
These items appear to capture largely nonpolitical dis-
positions. However, they are indicators of social at-
titudes rather than personality traits. As such, they
should be expected to have larger effects than person-
ality traits on other social attitudes such as ideology.
The five child-rearing items in the CCAP data form an
Authoritarianism scale whose alpha reliability is 0.68.
Another widely studied attitude is Racial Resent-
ment (Kinder and Sanders 1996), which measures neg-
ative feelings of whites toward blacks. For example,
one item asks respondents to agree or disagree that
“Over the past few years, African Americans have
gotten less than they deserve.” Like the child-rearing
items, these items measure social attitudes, and in this
case, attitudes that are quite political. Indeed, some of
the items appear to be concise versions of arguments
heard in contemporary political debates. The four-item
Racial Resentment scale has an alpha reliability of 0.86.
We use three separate models to isolate the extent to
which Authoritarianism, Racial Resentment, and the
Big Five measures each explain ideology. The first is
presented in Table 3, column (2). In the second, we
substituted the standardized Authoritarianism scale for
the Big Five items. In the third, we substituted the
standardized Racial Resentment scale for the Big Five
items. We found that Racial Resentment and Authori-
tarianism are strong predictors of ideology. The effect
of a two SD shift in the Authoritarianism scale on self-
reported ideology is 1.13 units on an ideology scale
that runs from −2to+2. The effect of a two SD shift
in the Resentment scale is 1.51 units. For Openness,
which affects ideology more than any other Big Five
trait, the comparable two SD effect is 0.66. For the
next most important trait, Conscientiousness, the effect
is 0.34.
Another way to compare predictive power is to
examine Rsquared for the separate models. The R
squares from separate OLS regression of ideology on
the Big Five traits, the Authoritarianism scale, and
the Racial Resentment scale (including the control
variables indicated in Table 3) are 0.15, 0.22, and
0.31, respectively. All of these models are, however,
affected by the presence of measurement error in
the independent variables. Using Gosling, Rentfrow,
and Swann (2003) reported trait-by-trait correlations
between the TIPI and the NEO PI-R measures of
the Big Five, we implemented errors-in-variables re-
gressions to account for this measurement error.
The Rsquare in the error-corrected model of Big
Five effects is 0.22. In the error-corrected models
for Authoritarianism and Racial Resentment, the R
squares are 0.29 and 0.35.14 Taken together, these
results indicate that the Big Five personality traits
are important determinants of ideology, but have
less predictive power than the social dispositions
measured by the Authoritarianism and Racial Resent-
ment scales.
Results, Context Effects
We next turn to our analysis of how context differences,
operationalized in this case by using race, affect the re-
lationship between personality and political attitudes.
As a first step, note that Table 2 displays both the pop-
ulation summary statistics and those figures separately
for different racial groups. Focusing our comparison
between black and white Americans, we note that there
are relatively small differences in personality across
groups. Relative to the SD for whites, the largest dif-
ference in average personality is only 0.18 SDs, for the
trait Emotional Stability. It is important to note the
possibility that, in theory, personality batteries might
measure different things across racial, gender, or so-
cioeconomic groups. We are unaware of prior research
specifically validating the measurement of the Big Five
separately for black and white Americans. However,
prior research has documented the reliability and con-
sistency of the Big Five measures across a broad range
of social contexts (see John and Srivastava 1999). Con-
sistent with this research, the small average differences
between these racial groups provides evidence that
racial context differences do not themselves generate
large differences in average personality. The measures
of attitudes, however, are quite different. On average,
blacks are 0.34 SDs more liberal in self-reported ide-
ology and 0.33 SDs more liberal on economic policy.
There are small differences on social policy issues, how-
ever, where black Americans are only 0.04 SDs more
liberal than whites.
Table 5 presents our analysis of the relationship be-
tween personality and attitudes across racial groups.
The column (1) and (2) specifications are results from
models estimated using Equation (2), without (column
[1]) and with education and income measures (column
[2]). Column (3) implements equation (2) by adding
80 additional interactions. These are 30 interactions of
the other covariates in the model (other than personal-
ity) multiplied by the race indicators (black, Hispanic,
and all others). This specification therefore allows the
effect of race to vary not only by personality, but also
by gender, income, education, and age. In addition, we
add 50 interactions for each of the personality traits
interacted with all other independent variables (other
than race). This specification also allows the effect of
personality to vary across categories other than race.
14 Unstandardized coefficients and Rsquares in these models vary
substantially by respondents’ level of political information. Precisely
identifying these effects in the case of the Big Five items is difficult,
however, because there is evidence that political knowledge is itself
affected by Big Five traits (analysis available on request).
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Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
TABLE 5. Effect of Personality by Race on Ideological Self-placement and Economic and Social Policy Attitudes
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
Self-reported Ideology Economic Policy
Attitudes Social Policy Attitudes
(−2=Very Cons.; 2 =Very
Lib., 0 =Not Sure) (Mean 0, SD1,
−Conservative to +Liberal) (Mean 0, SD1,
−Conservative to +Liberal)
Conscientiousness (0–1) −0.970 −0.955 0.074 −0.784 −0.720 −0.852 −0.654 −0.667 0.135
[0.108]∗∗ [0.110]∗∗ [0.776] [0.126]∗∗ [0.122]∗∗ [0.759] [0.088]∗∗ [0.089]∗∗ [0.709]
Openness (0–1) 1.933 1.825 3.881 1.281 1.308 2.183 1.597 1.440 2.005
[0.118]∗∗ [0.116]∗∗ [0.974]∗∗ [0.164]∗∗ [0.154]∗∗ [0.849]∗[0.107]∗∗ [0.104]∗∗ [0.730]∗∗
Agreeableness (0–1) 0.036 0.055 −0.789 0.679 0.616 0.200 −0.403 −0.372 −1.603
[0.133] [0.135] [1.122] [0.141]∗∗ [0.143]∗∗ [0.973] [0.112]∗∗ [0.112]∗∗ [0.745]∗
Stability (0–1) −0.614 −0.653 −1.866 −1.215 −1.090 −0.597 −0.202 −0.308 −1.482
[0.077]∗∗ [0.084]∗∗ [0.751]∗[0.102]∗∗ [0.106]∗∗ [0.884] [0.084]∗[0.087]∗∗ [0.571]∗∗
Extraversion (0–1) −0.207 −0.180 −1.035 −0.428 −0.331 −0.435 −0.098 −0.101 −0.949
[0.085]∗[0.084]∗[0.751] [0.092]∗∗ [0.094]∗∗ [0.604] [0.061] [0.054] [0.496]
Conscientiousness ×black 0.996 0.956 1.024 0.660 0.620 0.593 0.357 0.299 0.282
[0.224]∗∗ [0.232]∗∗ [0.273]∗∗ [0.375]∗[0.356]∗[0.326]∗[0.271] [0.272] [0.272]
Openness ×black −1.251 −1.158 −1.384 −0.555 −0.586 −0.721 −0.917 −0.778 −0.877
[0.282]∗∗ [0.272]∗∗ [0.291]∗∗ [0.379] [0.367] [0.362]∗[0.275]∗∗ [0.256]∗∗ [0.248]∗∗
Agreeableness ×black −0.111 −0.135 −0.014 −0.379 −0.435 −0.155 0.257 0.241 0.389
[0.376] [0.363] [0.371] [0.355] [0.379] [0.361] [0.283] [0.279] [0.291]
Stability ×black 0.341 0.345 0.216 0.833 0.902 0.434 0.072 0.049 0.054
[0.279] [0.263] [0.311] [0.311]∗∗ [0.301]∗∗ [0.312] [0.262] [0.273] [0.257]
Extraversion ×black 0.119 0.076 0.127 0.438 0.416 0.387 0.069 0.010 0.040
[0.193] [0.199] [0.211] [0.194]∗[0.194]∗[0.208] [0.183] [0.185] [0.194]
Conscientiousness ×Hispanic 0.198 0.245 0.319 0.614 0.763 0.786 −0.156 −0.198 −0.241
[0.286] [0.274] [0.322] [0.317] [0.349]∗[0.292]∗∗ [0.442] [0.421] [0.372]
Openness ×Hispanic −0.091 −0.100 −0.203 −0.401 −0.435 −0.708 0.143 0.102 −0.054
[0.464] [0.454] [0.463] [0.307] [0.299] [0.370] [0.533] [0.500] [0.431]
Agreeableness ×Hispanic 0.184 0.132 0.074 −0.344 −0.350 −0.040 0.228 0.198 0.268
[0.312] [0.304] [0.282] [0.305] [0.315] [0.276] [0.270] [0.235] [0.260]
Stability ×Hispanic 0.291 0.346 0.413 0.617 0.623 0.390 0.301 0.387 0.436
[0.215] [0.198] [0.216] [0.261]∗[0.261]∗[0.272] [0.298] [0.298] [0.271]
Extraversion ×Hispanic 0.463 0.421 0.523 0.414 0.462 0.306 0.447 0.371 0.343
[0.218]∗[0.224] [0.239]∗[0.204]∗[0.210]∗[0.238] [0.218]∗[0.201] [0.241]
Conscientiousness ×other races −0.783 −0.749 −0.488 0.425 0.361 0.621 −0.054 −0.013 0.100
[0.341]∗[0.325]∗[0.356] [0.466] [0.469] [0.401] [0.532] [0.581] [0.462]
Openness ×other races −0.184 0.073 −0.348 −0.272 −0.162 −0.526 −0.104 0.169 −0.091
[0.419] [0.394] [0.395] [0.362] [0.351] [0.395] [0.353] [0.326] [0.373]
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
Agreeableness ×other races 0.502 0.244 0.505 −0.667 −0.838 −0.294 0.735 0.444 0.884
[0.485] [0.489] [0.557] [0.458] [0.454] [0.557] [0.415] [0.414] [0.408]∗
Stability ×other races −0.124 0.004 0.014 0.073 0.135 −0.198 −0.421 −0.222 −0.388
[0.321] [0.325] [0.388] [0.395] [0.377] [0.369] [0.296] [0.312] [0.347]
Extraversion ×other races −0.389 −0.471 −0.315 −0.571 −0.604 −0.563 −0.585 −0.694 −0.684
[0.303] [0.286] [0.239] [0.336] [0.327] [0.309] [0.309] [0.294]∗[0.287]∗
Constant 0.433 0.580 −0.074 0.143 0.364 −0.154 0.361 0.466 1.421
[0.198]∗[0.207]∗∗ [1.017] [0.207] [0.214] [1.047] [0.170]∗[0.176]∗∗ [0.790]
Includes controls for gender, race, age,
and age squared? (see Table 3) Ye s Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Includes controls for Education (categories)
and income (including refused)? (see Table 3) No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Includes race ×all controls other than
personality? (30 variables) No No Yes No No Yes No No Yes
Includes personality ×all controls other than
race? (50 variables) No No Yes No No Yes No No Yes
Observations 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472 12,472
Left censored obs. 1,964 1,964 1,964 2,265 2,265 2,265 1,094 1,094 1,094
Right censored obs. 1,303 1,303 1,303 3,067 3,067 3,067 2,023 2,023 2,023
F
test: race ×personality 7.806 7.516 8.409 4.749 4.623 2.665 6.830 6.079 5.421
interactions
Prob. >
F
0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Note
: Tobit coefficients with robust standard errors (clustered by state) in brackets. Weighted analysis. Sample restricted to cases with valid observations for all variables. State
fixed effects not reported to save space.
∗Significant at 5%.
∗∗ Significant at 1%, two-tailed tests except for personality traits ×black interactions for which directional hypotheses were offered (see Table 4B).
125

Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
We view this specification as extremely conservative
given the ample reason to believe that personality is
(primarily) causally prior to outcomes such as educa-
tion and income. Despite this, the differences across
racial groups that we discuss are largely unaffected by
these specification choices.
We focus our discussion on the interactions between
each personality trait and the indicator for black Amer-
icans because we have clear expectations regarding
how differences in social environments across these
groups affect how, on average, people in each group un-
derstand political stimuli. These expected differences
in the meaning of political stimuli across groups al-
lowed us to state specific hypotheses regarding how
the associations between dispositional traits and polit-
ical attitudes will vary across these groups. Therefore,
although there are also interesting differences between
whites and Hispanics, we do not discuss them here.
In each model, the coefficients on each Big Five trait
are the relationship between the trait and the outcome
among white respondents. The coefficients on the inter-
actions between the traits and the black indicator cap-
ture the difference in each relationship between black
and white Americans. Finally, the linear combination
(sum) of the coefficient on a trait and the associated
interaction term can be interpreted as the relationship
between a trait and outcome among black respondents.
For example, in the column (2) specification, the coeffi-
cient for Conscientiousness ×black is positive and sta-
tistically significant. This means that, relative to whites,
Conscientiousness is less strongly associated with con-
servative ideological self-placement among blacks. For
ease of interpretation, Figure 2 presents graphically
first difference estimates for the effects of personality
(a two SD increase in each trait) separately for black
and white Americans based on the models in columns
(2), (5), and (8).
We hypothesized that the relationships between
Conscientiousness and conservative ideology and
economic policy opinions and between Openness to
Experience and liberal ideology and economic policy
opinions would be attenuated for blacks relative to
whites. Table 5 and Figure 2 confirm these expectations.
In each case, we can reject the null hypothesis that the
effects of these traits on overall ideology and economic
policy opinions are the same for blacks and whites
(p<.05, one tailed for all six Conscientiousness ×
black coefficients; p<.05, one tailed for four of six
Openness ×black coefficients, p=.07 and .06 for coef-
ficients in columns [4] and [5], respectively). As Figure 2
illustrates, in contrast to the strong relationship
between Conscientiousness and conservatism among
white Americans, the ideology and economic policy
opinions of black Americans do not change much with
levels of Conscientiousness (the linear combination of
the effect of Conscientiousness and Conscientiousness
×black is indistinguishable from zero), and the strong
relationship between Openness to Experience and
liberal opinions is also greatly diminished. Note, too,
that these effects persist in the column (3) and (6) speci-
fications that include an additional 80 interaction terms.
These findings are consistent with our expectations that
ideological labels and economic policy have different
political meanings for blacks relative to whites.
Before continuing, we note that although we did not
have strong expectations about the differences in the
effects of Openness on social policy attitudes for blacks
and whites, we also find a mitigation of the effect of
this trait for blacks (relative to whites). In the interest
of avoiding ex post speculation, we simply note that
this reduction is relatively large and similar in pat-
tern to what we observe for the relationship between
Openness and overall ideology and economic policy
opinions.
For Agreeableness, we hypothesized that this trait
would be more strongly associated with holding
liberal economic policy opinions among whites. The
coefficient for the interaction of Agreeableness ×
black is consistently negative, but it is not statistically
significant (pvalues range from .13 to .33, one tailed)
Although the estimate is not as precise as we might
desire, we note that the difference in estimated effect
sizes is substantial: for white Americans, the estimated
effect of a two SD increase in Agreeableness is .24
(p<.01), whereas for black Americans it is .07
(p=.62). We did not expect differences for either
overall ideology or social policy opinions, and find
that the differences between blacks and whites are
substantively small and statistically insignificant.
As with Agreeableness, in the case of Emotional Sta-
bility, we hypothesized that there would be a weaker
relationship between this trait and holding conserva-
tive economic policy opinions for blacks than whites.
This expectation is confirmed: among whites, a two
SD increase in Stability is associated with a 0.49 SD
increase in economic conservatism (p<.01, per the
column [5] specification), but among black respondents
this effect is relatively small (p=.47). This difference
is statistically significant (p<.05 in the column [4]
and [5] specifications, although it rises to .08 in column
[6]). We did not predict differences between black and
white Americans in the effects of Emotional Stability
on overall ideology and social policy opinions, and find
that there are only substantively modest and statisti-
cally insignificant differences in these domains.
Finally, we turn to Extraversion, for which we
did not predict differences between black and white
Americans in the effect of this trait. For overall ide-
ology and social policy opinions, we find small and
insignificant differences. However, we find a significant
difference in the relationship between Extraversion
and economic policy opinions for blacks and whites.
Blacks scoring higher on Extraversion are more eco-
nomically liberal (although this effect is statistically
indistinguishable from zero), whereas whites higher on
this trait are significantly more economically conserva-
tive. This is consistent with the possibility, considered
previously, that peer effects in relatively homogenous
environments are larger for those higher on the trait of
Extraversion.
Our findings are summarized in Table 4B. We offered
six directional hypotheses and found support for five of
them. We also found statistically significant differences
between black and white Americans in two cases where
126

American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
FIGURE 2A. Self-reported Ideology
Note
: Plot is from column 2 specification in Table 5. Marginal effects are for latent XB. Change in ideology based on 2 SD increase in
trait. Ideology ranges from −2to2(SD=1.2). Error bars mark 95% (2-tailed) confidence intervals.
FIGURE 2B. Economic Policy Attitudes
Note
: Plot is from column 5 specification in Table 5. Marginal effects are for latent XB. Change in Economic Policy attitudes based on 2
SD increase in trait. Economic Policy attitudes is a mean =0, SD =1 scale. Error bars mark 95% (2-tailed) confidence intervals.
127

Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
FIGURE 2C. Social Policy Attitudes
Note
: Plot is from column 8 specification in Table 5. Marginal effects are for latent XB. Change in Social Policy attitudes based on 2 SD
increase in trait. Social Policy attitudes is a mean =0, SD =1 scale. Error bars mark 95% (2-tailed) confidence intervals.
we did not expect them (the effect of Openness on
social policy opinions and the effect of Extraversion on
economic policy opinions). Counting those two cases
as failures, our overall success rate is five out of eight
statistically significant results (directional hypotheses
plus two unexpected effects), or about 63%.
More substantively, our findings support the theoret-
ical argument made previously that the relationships
between dispositional traits (e.g., the Big Five) and
opinions are affected by contextual differences that
change the meaning of political stimuli. Across a
variety of model specifications, we find that con-
textual differences—here, between black and white
Americans—alter the relationships between Big Five
traits and political attitudes. Of importance, these dif-
ferences are not haphazard or the result of particu-
larly confining model specifications, rather they emerge
mostly for opinion areas (political stimuli) that are
likely to have contextually different meanings and ap-
pear even in very flexible statistical specifications that
allow the effects of race and personality to vary with
all other model variables.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The analysis we present in this article provides evidence
that the core dispositional personality traits measured
by the Big Five affect not only overall self-reported
ideology, but also underlying economic and social pol-
icy opinions. This is, to our knowledge, the first study
to use a large national sample to examine how Big
Five traits affect these issue attitudes. What is perhaps
most striking about our findings is that items on the
TIPI, on their face, appear to have nothing to do with
politics. Moreover, the TIPI is an extremely brief and
crude battery. Importantly, our large and national sam-
ple of registered voters allows us to detect relatively
modest effect sizes and resolve differences present in
prior research, as well as to increase our confidence in
the robustness of previous results linking personality
to overall ideology.
To review, we find that Openness and Conscientious-
ness, the two traits most consistently associated with
political ideology in prior research, also have effects of
similar magnitudes on social and economic attitudes.
Conscientiousness explains overall conservatism and
holding conservative economic and social policy at-
titudes, whereas Openness is associated with liberal-
ism across these three measures. However, the effects
of the other three traits vary in direction or magni-
tude across issue domain. Although Emotional Stabil-
ity is associated with social conservatism, it is much
more strongly associated with economic conservatism.
Similarly, we find a modest relationship between Ex-
traversion and both economic and social conservatism,
but the effect on economic attitudes is relatively
larger. Finally, Agreeableness, which prior research has
found to be uncorrelated with self-reported ideology, is
associated with economic liberalism but social
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
conservatism. The countervailing effects of Agreeable-
ness and weak associations between Stability and Ex-
traversion and social policy attitudes may explain the
relative lack of statistically significant relationships be-
tween these traits and ideology in prior research relying
on smaller samples.
Among the motivations for this research was the
possibility that ideological constraint—the tendency of
liberals (conservatives) to hold similar views across a
variety of policy domains—could be partially explained
by the influence of personality traits. Our finding that
for four traits, and particularly for Conscientiousness
and Openness, responses to economic and social policy
stimuli are congruent (move in the same ideological
direction, although for Emotional Stability and Ex-
traversion there are important differences in effect
sizes across issues domains) provides some evidence
that ideological coherence is in part a function of core
individual-level differences in personality (combined
with contexts that give meaning to political and social
stimuli). It also provides a micro-level explanation for
the observation that liberals and conservatives are dif-
ferent in both their public political and private lives
(Carney et al. 2008) because such ideological differ-
ences emerge, in part, from an individual’s general
response to external stimuli in both the political and
nonpolitical world.
Of course, there are other explanations for the
sources of, and barriers to, ideological thinking. But,
in this regard, our new finding that Agreeableness is
associated with economic liberalism and social conser-
vatism provides important evidence of the value of a
trait-based explanation. For the one trait for which we
identify reasons why individuals could be moved in
opposite ideological directions by economic and social
policy stimuli, we find such differences. This suggests
that when forming opinions, individuals do not need to
be uniformly liberal or conservative, but instead that
at times they may be cross pressured. Thus, seemingly
conflicting views across domains may be evidence not
of confusion or inattention to elite cues, but genuine
differences in personality-shaped preferences across
domains that do not conform to elite or academic no-
tions of ideological constraint.
Beyond demonstrating aggregate correlations be-
tween Big Five traits and political attitudes, we also
document the way in which these effects vary across
environments in which political stimuli are likely to
have different meanings. We show that the relation-
ships between core dispositional traits and character-
istic adaptations such as ideology and policy attitudes
vary systematically with context. The particular em-
pirical analysis we conduct focuses on differences in
the United States between blacks and whites. We posit
that differences in how ideological labels and economic
policies are socially defined will affect the relation-
ships between Big Five traits and both ideological self-
identification and economic policy attitudes for these
groups. The differences we observe are consistent with
our expectations about how the meaning of these po-
litical stimuli varies across these groups. Although the
particular hypotheses we present and racial differences
in the relationship between personality and attitudes
we find are interesting, the more general contribution
is to instantiate the claim that political stimuli have
contextually dependent meanings and that the route
between personality and opinions is moderated by such
differences. There are also several other implications
of this finding.
First, there are likely to be other contextual differ-
ences of interest to scholars (e.g., gender, religious
groups, local political networks, cultures) that affect
the meaning of these political stimuli and other char-
acteristic adaptations (e.g., Partisanship, RWA, Racial
Resentment, SDO, Nationalism, Group Pride).15 More
broadly, the notion of environment-specific effects sug-
gests that the link between personality and attitudes is
likely to be a function of features of political environ-
ments such as social networks that are of growing inter-
est across the social sciences (see, e.g., Christakis and
Fowler 2009; Heaney and McClurg 2009). Likewise, the
role of individual-level genetic differences in explain-
ing political opinions and behavior is an area of ongoing
work (e.g., Alford, Funk, and Hibbing 2005; Dawes and
Fowler 2009; Eaves and Hatemi 2008; Fowler, Baker,
and Dawes 2008; Fowler and Dawes 2008; Hatemi et al.
2009; Hatemi et al. 2007; Martin et al. 1986; Settle,
Dawes, and Fowler 2009). Although there may be more
direct links between genetics and political outcomes,
the notion that contexts provide meaning to politi-
cal stimuli seems like a promising theoretical conduit
for how individual-level genetic differences, which are
correlated with dispositional traits, affect political atti-
tudes and behavior. It also suggests the value of mid-
level research on how expressed dispositional traits re-
late to attitudes and behavior because such traits and
context-dependent differences may capture relevant
genetic influences.
Second, this finding places the study of political so-
cialization and elite discourse in a unified framework
linking individual dispositions to mass behavior. The
process of political socialization grounds individual-
and group-level interpretation of political objects,
whereas elite contestation seeks to challenge existing
categorizations and give meaning to emergent issues
(stimuli) (Lakoff 2004; Levendusky 2009). Thus, for
example, differences in the relationship between per-
sonality traits and attitudes about gay marriage may re-
flect context or cohort-based differences in whether the
issue is understood as endorsing “homosexual behav-
ior” or supporting same-sex couples in adopting het-
erosexual marriage practices. In this view, elite framing
and other attempts to shape how issues are understood
can have important implications for how mass attitudes
relate to individual-level differences.
15 In exploratory analysis (not reported), we examined gender dif-
ferences in the effects of personality and find several interesting pat-
terns, including the trait of Emotional Stability being more strongly
associated with economic conservatism for men than women. We
do not present these results both because of space limitations and
because we are unable to specify unambiguous ex ante hypotheses
about the effects of differences in political contexts for men and
women.
129

Personality and Political Attitudes February 2010
We also want to be clear about the limitations of
this research. Most obviously, we rely on self-reports
of attitudes and manipulate neither personality nor
individual-level contexts that affect the meaning of
political stimuli. As with all survey responses, measure-
ment is an important and difficult issue. Self-reports of
personality may incorporate accurate assessments of
personality tendencies and also reflect a respondent’s
values, perceptions of social norms, and current state of
mind, as well as attitudes induced by the survey itself.
A great deal of research indicates that Big Five traits
are highly stable over time and that the individual-
level contexts we focus on are arguably exogenous to
individual-level choices. Still, there is clear room for
subsequent research that seeks to manipulate person-
ality differences (e.g., the salience of different traits)
or the meaning of political stimuli (e.g., by introduc-
ing new political objects and framing them in different
ways). There is also the question of how to interpret
findings from the CCAP sample, which although larger
and more representative than many convenience sam-
ples, nonetheless focuses on registered voters and ne-
cessarily includes only those who are willing to take
Internet-based surveys. These caveats aside, our work
suggests fruitful ground for how scholars can turn to
other data and analytic approaches to understand the
complex relationship between personality and political
attitudes that our research has helped to map.
APPENDIX
Question Wording and Coding
TIPI (10 trait pairs)
Here are a number of personality traits that may or may
not apply to you. Indicate the extent to which you agree or
disagree with each statement. You should rate the extent to
which the pair of traits applies to you, even if one character-
istic applies more strongly than the other.
Extraversion: Extraverted, enthusiastic; Reserved, quiet
(Reverse coded)
Agreeableness: Sympathetic, warm; Critical, quarrelsome
(Reverse coded)
Conscientiousness: Dependable, self-disciplined; Disorga-
nized, careless (Reverse coded)
Emotional Stability: Calm, emotionally stable; Anxious, eas-
ily upset (Reverse coded)
Openness: Open to new experiences, complex; Conventional,
uncreative (Reverse coded)
(1 =Disagree strongly; 2 =Disagree moderately; 3 =Dis-
agree a little; 4 =Neither agree nor disagree; 5 =Agree a
little; 6 =Agree moderately; 7 =Agree strongly. Responses
rescaled to range from 0 to 1.)
Ideology
Ideology: Thinking about politics these days, how would you
describe the political viewpoint of the following individuals
... Yourself? (−2=Very conservative; −1=Conservative;
0=Moderate/not sure; 1 =Liberal; 2 =Very liberal).
Policy Opinions
All items are scored with the more liberal position on the high
end and then standardized (M =0, SD =1). The two items
within each scale were then averaged, and the new mean scale
was standardized (M =0, SD =1). Respondents providing
“don’t know”/“not sure” responses were not included in the
analyses.
Social Policy. Abortion (support): Under what circum-
stances should abortion be legal? (0 =Abortion should be
illegal. It should never be allowed; 1 =Abortion should only
be legal in special circumstances, such as when the life of the
mother is in danger; 2 =Abortion should be legal, but with
some restrictions (e.g., for minors or late-term abortions);
3=Abortion should always be legal. There should be no
restrictions on abortion.)
Civil Unions (support): Do you favor allowing civil unions
for gay and lesbian couples? These would give them many of
the same rights as married couples. (0 =Strongly oppose; 1 =
Somewhat oppose; 2 =Somewhat favor; 3 =Strongly favor).
Economic Policy. Government Health Care (support):
Which comes closest to your view about providing health
care in the United States? (0 =Health insurance should be
voluntary. Individuals should either buy insurance or obtain it
through their employers as they do currently. The elderly and
the very poor should be covered by Medicare and Medicaid
as they are currently; 1 =Companies should be required to
provide health insurance for their employees, and the govern-
ment should provide subsidies for those who are not working
or retired; 2 =The government should provide everyone with
health care and pay for it with tax dollars.)
Tax $200K+(support): Do you favor raising federal taxes on
families earning more than $200,000 per year? (0 =Strongly
oppose; 1 =Somewhat oppose; 2 =Somewhat favor; 3 =
Strongly favor).
Other
Female: 0 =Male; 1 =Female
White: 0 =Non-white; 1 =White
Black: 0 =Non-black; 1 =Black
Hispanic: 0 =Non-Hispanic; 1 =Hispanic
Other race (Native American, Asian, Mixed, Other): 0 =Not
other race; 1 =Other race
Education: 1 =No high school diploma; 2 =High school
graduate; 3 =Some college; 4 =Two-year degree; 5 =
College graduate; 6 =Postgraduate
Family income: 1 =<$10,000; 2 =$10,000–$14,999; 3 =
$15,000–$19,999; 4 =$20,000–$24,999; 5 =$25,000–$29,999;
6=$30,000–$39,999; 7 =$40,000–$49,999; 8 =$50,000–
$59,999; 9 =$60,000–$69,999; 10 =$70,000–$79,999; 11 =
$80,000–$99,999; 12 =$100,000–$119,999; 13 =$120,000–
$149,999; 14 =$150,000 or more; 15 =Prefer not to say or
missing
Age: Years
Authoritarianism: Although there are a number of qualities
that people believe that children should have, everyone be-
lieves that some are more important than others. Listed here
are pairs of desirable qualities. For each pair, please mark
which one you think is more important for a child to have.
Which is more important for a child to have? (α=0.68)
1. Independence (0) or Respect for elders (1)
2. Obedience (1) or Self-reliance (0)
3. Curiosity (0) or Good manners (1)
4. Being considerate (0) or Being well behaved (1)
5. Disciplined (1) or Creative (0)
Racial Resentment (1 =Agree strongly; 2 =Agree some-
what; 3 =Neither agree nor disagree; 4 =Disagree some-
what; 5 =Disagree strongly) (α=0.86)
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American Political Science Review Vol. 104, No. 1
Table A1. Correlation Matrix among Big Five Traits
Conscientiousness Openness Agreeableness Stability Extraversion
Conscientiousness 1
Openness 0.173 1
Agreeableness 0.260 0.210 1
Stability 0.353 0.218 0.378 1
Extraversion 0.077 0.304 0.036 0.042 1
1. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created
conditions that make it difficult for African Americans
to work their way out of the lower class.
2. Many other minority groups have overcome prejudice
and worked their way up. African Americans should do
the same without any special favors. (Reverse coded)
3. Over the past few years, African Americans have gotten
less than they deserve.
4. It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard
enough; if African Americans would only try harder,
they could be just as well off as whites. (Reverse coded)
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