Personality Traits and the Sense of Civic Duty

Abstract

Recently, a burgeoning literature has developed around the idea that personality traits influence political attitudes and orientations. There has also been increasing recognition that orientations like the sense of civic duty exert a powerful influence on voting behavior. Despite the theoretical and empirical importance of civic duty, little research has investigated its antecedents. This article turns to individual personality traits as a potential explanation for why some people feel a stronger sense of civic duty than others. The analysis shows that a number of the Big Five traits shape an individual’s sense of civic duty, with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness having statistically significant (p < .05) effects. The effects of personality traits rival and, in some cases, exceed the influence of variables that have typically been used to explain the sense of duty, including income. In the end, this study provides new evidence that personality traits influence broad orientations toward political life.

Keywords

civic duty personality traits sense of duty prosocial voter turnout

Introduction

The question of why some people vote while others choose not to has long been of interest to political scientists. One of the most interesting aspects of this question surrounds the paradoxical nature of voting: the likelihood that a single vote will influence the outcome of interest is infinitesimal, so why would people choose to bear the costs of voting? One explanation that has developed as a way to resolve this paradox suggests that, in part, the decision to vote is driven by a person’s sense of civic duty (Blais, 2000; Downs, 1957; Riker & Ordeshook, 1968). Loewen and Dawes provide a nice description of duty, noting that it is “a belief that an individual has an obligation to undertake actions that benefit others even when the actions are costly to themselves. In the context of voting, a sense of a duty to vote will then be based on a belief that one has an obligation to others to vote, even though voting is costly” (p. 364). In short, the sense of duty is “a prosocial orientation applied to politics” (Loewen & Dawes, 2012, p. 364). Decades ago, the authors of The American Voter outlined the importance of the sense of civic duty, noting that “Wide currency in American society is given the idea that the individual has a civic responsibility to vote . . . Of course its strength is not the same for everyone, and the degree to which the individual feels an obligation to vote is an important aspect of his orientation to politics” (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960, p. 105). Several years later, Riker and Ordeshook (1968) illustrated the theoretical and empirical importance of civic duty, adding a “D” term to the calculus of voting equation (R = PB-C+D) to account for the benefit that voters may get from fulfilling the social obligation to vote.¹

From the standpoint of democratic theory, the idea that people have—or should have—a sense of civic duty is one that has received a great deal of attention. Indeed, in their classic work The Civic Culture, Almond and Verba (1963) build the sense of civic obligation into their idea of what defines a civic culture. More recently, Dalton (2008) has noted that because public participation in politics is a defining feature of democratic governance, feelings of obligation to participate in civic life should be viewed as an essential element of good citizenship. Given the importance of civic duty, it is not surprising that a vast amount of intellectual energy has been spent on the question of how to cultivate a sense of civic obligation among citizens (Campbell, 2005, 2006; Dalton, 2008). Many of the interventions proposed by scholars to foster a sense of civic duty focus on the development of civics curricula, service-learning opportunities, and an encouraging civic climate within schools (Campbell, 2005; Gottlieb & Robinson, 2002).

On an empirical level, numerous scholars have shown that the sense of civic duty has a powerful impact on political outcomes of interest. For instance, the sense of civic duty is a powerful predictor of how likely an individual is to vote (Blais, 2000; Blais & Achen, 2010; Campbell et al., 1960). In fact, Blais (2000) suggests that duty is the strongest predictor of turnout. Campbell (2005) finds the sense of civic duty has an enduring impact on turnout, noting that “strong civic norms lead adolescents to internalize a sense of civic duty, which increases their level of voter turnout well past adolescence. Enhancing civic norms within America’s schools, therefore, has the potential to stem the decline in political engagement, especially voter turnout, among young people” (p. 1). In addition, the sense of duty appears to exert a particularly strong impact on turnout for those people who express low levels of interest in politics, which makes a great deal of theoretical sense (Blais & Achen, 2010; Blais & Labbé St-Vincent, 2011).² In recent field experimental research on voter turnout, Gerber, Green, and Larimer (2008) and Panagopoulos (2011) find that priming feelings of civic duty during elections increases voter turnout by about 1.8%, a small but not inconsequential boost in participation. It appears, then, that the sense of civic duty has a powerful influence on political engagement. Although much research has developed on the antecedents of political attitudes and orientations, such as political efficacy, trust, ideology, and partisanship, little research has explored what factors shape the sense of civic duty. Given that the sense of duty is one of the most important determinants of political participation and voter turnout, it seems reasonable to wonder where feelings of civic obligation come from. If we know where the sense of duty comes from, we will be better equipped to figure out whether and how it can be cultivated. In the rest of this article, I discuss the origins of civic duty and develop and test hypotheses about how personality attributes might explain variation in individuals’ feelings of civic duty. Initially, one might interpret the suggestion that personality traits influence feelings of civic duty to mean that interventions aimed at boosting feelings of civic obligation are unlikely to be effective. After all, personality traits are present at an early age, remarkably stable over time, and deeply rooted in individuals (McCrae & Costa, 2006). I would caution against such an interpretation. Although personality attributes are deeply ingrained in individuals, knowing what a person’s personality traits are may be particularly useful when designing interventions aimed at boosting feelings of civic duty. In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of my findings in light of previous research on how to increase feelings of civic duty among individuals.

The Origins of Civic Duty

Although the sense of civic duty has not received nearly as much attention from political scientists as other orientations like partisanship, there has been some research on the origins of the sense of civic duty. Blais (2000), for instance, uses political interest, gender, education, age, region, income, and religiosity to predict the sense of civic duty using three survey data sets from Canada. He measures the sense of civic duty by asking respondents the extent to which they agree with statements, such as it is the duty of every citizen to vote; to preserve democracy, it is essential to vote; and if I did not vote, I would feel guilty. His findings show that women, politically interested, older, higher income, and more religious respondents have a stronger sense of duty. More recently, Loewen and Dawes (2012) have examined the heritability of duty using a twin-study design. Interestingly, they find that a fairly large potion of the sense of civic duty appears to be heritable. Loewen and Dawes’ research draws attention to the idea that deeply rooted factors may influence political attitudes and orientations. One interesting possible source of the sense of civic duty is individual personality traits. In fact, Loewen and Dawes point out that “we have not identified which of the more general personality traits (e.g., the “Big Five”) may encapsulate a sense of duty” (2012, p. 371). In their work on the origins of civic duty, Blais and Labbé St-Vincent (2011) find some evidence that lower level personality items are related to civic duty. They focus on altruism, shyness, personal efficacy, and conflict avoidance but do not explore the link between the Big Five traits and the sense of duty. Interestingly, Blais and Labbé St-Vincent (2011) find that three of the four traits they consider (altruism, shyness, and personal efficacy) have statistically significant effects on civic duty. Their measure of civic duty includes items, such as I would feel guilty if I did not vote in an election; it is every citizen’s duty to vote in an election; and how strongly do you personally feel that voting is a duty? Taken together, the recent work by Loewen and Dawes (2012) and Blais and Labbé St-Vincent (2011) suggests that researchers should further investigate personality traits, or deep-seated individual differences, as a source of the sense of civic duty.

Recently, political scientists have taken great interest in the role of personality traits in shaping political behavior, with the Big Five gaining much attention (see Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011; Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, Raso et al., 2011; Mondak, 2010; Mondak, Canache, Seligson, & Hibbing, 2011; Mondak & Halperin, 2008; Mondak, Hibbing, Canache, Seligson, & Anderson, 2010). The Big Five personality traits have been used to explain a range of political attitudes and orientations, including political interest (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011), ideology (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, & Ha, 2010), partisanship (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2012), trust (Mondak, 2010) and group identity (Weber, Johnson, & Arceneaux, 2011). Interestingly, these traits have been also been linked to political and community engagement. For instance, Mondak et al. (2010) find that the Big Five are associated with activities like attending meetings, putting up a yard sign, and volunteering to work for a party or candidate. Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, Raso et al. (2011) also find a link between personality and political and civic engagement, including the extent to which people partake in local politics (e.g., contacting a local official, attending a local meeting, and speaking at a local meeting). Although these studies provide important insights into the behavioral consequences of personality, they do not explore people’s underlying sense of duty; that is, the extent to which people feel obligated to be a part of political life. Although political attitudes and orientations like political interest and knowledge have important effects on political behavior and have received a great deal of attention from political scientists, I argue that civic duty is an equally important political orientation that deserves further examination by scholars. The sense of duty is related to numerous political behaviors of interest, including voter turnout and many other forms of political participation (Blais, 2000; Blais & Achen, 2010; Dalton, 2008).³

As a next step in understanding how personality influences orientations to politics, I examine the link between the Big Five traits and the sense of civic duty. My analysis unfolds in a straightforward manner. First, I provide a brief overview of the Big Five. Second, I develop hypotheses about how personality might influence the sense of civic duty. Third, I test the hypotheses using data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). My analysis shows that a number of the Big Five traits shape an individual’s sense of civic duty, with Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion having important effects. The results of this study are consistent with recent research showing that personality traits influence political attitudes and orientations.

Personality Traits

By far, the most widely used model for understanding and measuring personality is the five-factor model (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003). Gosling et al. note that “The Big-Five framework is a hierarchical model of personality traits with five broad factors, which represent personality at the broadest level of abstraction. Each bipolar factor (e.g., Extraversion vs. Introversion) summarizes several more specific facets (e.g., Sociability), which, in turn, subsume a large number of even more specific traits (e.g., talkative, outgoing). The Big-Five framework suggests that most individual differences in human personality can be classified into five broad, empirically derived domains” (2003, p. 506).

To be clear, the “Big Five” moniker was not selected as a proclamation of the inherent greatness of the factors but instead to emphasize that each of the five factors is extremely broad (John & Srivastava, 1999). The Big Five traits are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. John and Srivastava (1999) provide a nice description of each of the factors:

Extraversion implies an energetic approach to the social and material world and includes traits such as sociability, activity, assertiveness, and positive emotionality. Agreeableness contrasts a prosocial and communal orientation toward others with antagonism and includes traits such as altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, and modesty. Conscientiousness describes socially prescribed impulse control 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 feeling anxious, nervous, sad, and tense . . . Openness to Experience (versus closed-mindedness) describes the breadth, depth, originality, and complexity of an individual’s mental and experiential life (p. 121).

Typically, the Big Five is measured by having respondents rate themselves (or others) on a range of adjectives or adjective pairs using measurement batteries, such as the 240-item NEO–PI–R (NEO–Personality Inventory–Revised), the 60-item NEO–FFI (NEO–Five-Factor Inventory), the 44-item BFI (Big Five Inventory), or the TIPI (Ten-Item Personality Inventory). The justification for using adjectives to measure personality comes from the lexical hypothesis, which suggests that “Those individual differences that are most significant in the daily transactions of persons with each other become encoded into their language. The more important such a difference is, the more people will notice it and wish to talk of it, with the result that eventually they will invent a word for it” (Goldberg, 1982, p. 204). McCrae and Costa (2006) have shown that self-reports and peer-reports from adjective-based personality tests correlate at fairly high levels, boosting confidence in the validity of self-reported survey measures.

Expectations

Given the brief description of the Big Five personality traits above, it is now appropriate to consider how these traits might influence the sense of civic duty. The personality trait that is perhaps most likely to influence the sense of civic duty is Conscientiousness. People with high scores on this trait typically feel compelled to abide by rules and norms (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, & Panagopoulos, in press; McCrae & Costa, 2006; Mondak, 2010). A number of studies (Miller, Griffin, & Hart, 1999; Neuman & Kickul, 1998) have found that Conscientiousness is positively related to citizenship in the workplace (e.g., volunteering for extra work or responsibilities, helping others, etc.). As such, I expect that Conscientious people will feel a stronger sense of civic duty. The Agreeableness trait should also influence civic duty. People high on this trait typically have a prosocial or communal orientation and are altruistic, trusting, compliant, and willing to cooperate (John & Srivastava, 1999). In short, such people are concerned about social harmony and the well being of others in society. Previous research on the influence of Agreeableness has illustrated that this trait is positively correlated with volunteering and holding prosocial value motivations (Carlo, Okun, Knight, & de Guzman, 2005). In addition, a number of studies have found that individuals with high scores on Agreeableness are more likely than their counterparts to engage in citizenship behaviors in the workplace (Hense, 2000; McManus & Kelly, 1999). Given these findings, I expect that agreeable people will have a stronger sense of civic duty than their counterparts.

Above and beyond Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, Extraversion may influence the sense of civic duty. Extraverted people tend to be outgoing, talkative, assertive, sociable, and have larger social networks than introverts (Gosling et al., 2003; Mondak et al., 2010). Because extraverts tend to feel comfortable asserting themselves and expressing their opinions (Hibbing, Ritchie, & Anderson, 2011), they may feel a strong obligation to participate in civic life, a realm where they can regularly express their values, beliefs, and viewpoints. In addition, Blais and Labbé St-Vincent (2011) point out that extraverts may feel more fully integrated into society (because they enjoy affiliating with others and do so often) and may therefore feel more obligated to abide by societal norms than their counterparts. Given these observations, I expect extraverts to feel a stronger sense of civic duty than their counterparts.

The theoretical links between Emotional Stability, Openness, and the sense of civic duty are not as obvious as the connections outlined above; however, these traits represent an important component of individual personality and may be connected to the sense of civic duty. When it comes to Openness, there are several possible theoretical connections that could exist between this trait and the sense of duty. On one hand, people with high scores on Openness tend to be individualistic and nonconforming (Carney, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2008). As such, we might expect a negative relationship between Openness and the sense of duty, which focuses on one’s feeling of obligation to undertake actions within society that benefit others. In addition, people with high scores on this trait are more likely than their counterparts to hold unconventional ideas and opinions (Saucier, 2006), and may therefore feel less committed to conventional political activities like voting that are also widely viewed as social norms. On the other hand, those with high scores on Openness tend to be intellectual and enjoy cognitive stimulation (Costa & McCrae, 1988) and may have an appreciation of the importance of voting and of the intellectual components associated with making a vote choice. In this way, we might expect a positive link between Openness and duty. Given the divergent theoretical expectations for this trait, I use a two-tailed hypothesis test when examining the effect of Openness on civic duty in the section that follows.

To the extent that Emotional Stability is related to the sense of duty, I expect that there will be a positive relationship. People with high scores on this trait tend be emotionally secure, confident and relaxed, even when stressful situations or conflicts happen, while those with low scores tend to be easily upset, frequently experience negative emotions, and have trouble dealing with problems or conflicts when they occur (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, Raso et al., 2011). Given that people with high levels of Emotional Stability may find it easier to deal with the conflictual nature that is associated with electoral politics than their counterparts, they may feel a stronger sense of commitment to engage in activities like voting that entail direct conflicts between candidates and parties (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, Raso et al., 2011).

Data and Measures

The MIDUS study is a useful data source to assess the influence of personality traits on the sense of civic duty. The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development conducted the first national survey of MIDUS from 1995 to 1996. The purpose of the survey was to investigate the role of behavioral, psychological, and social factors in accounting for age-related variations in health and well-being in a national sample of Americans. The study employed a national probability sample (random digit dialing) but did contain a number of oversamples. In this article, I only make use of the RDD sample. Although there was a longitudinal follow-up study conducted after the first wave of MIDUS, I do not make use of those data because they do not contain measures of interest (e.g., civic duty).

Within the MIDUS study, respondents were asked to rate themselves on a number of adjectives derived from the Big Five. Each of the questions asked respondents to “Please indicate how well each of the following describes you,” with a lot, some, little, and not at all as response categories (coded from 1 to 4). The trait measures were as follows: for Extraversion (outgoing, friendly, lively, active, talkative, dominant, self-confident, assertive, forceful, and outspoken), for Emotional Stability (moody, worrying, nervous, and calm), for Openness (creative, imaginative, intelligent, curious, broad-minded, sophisticated, and adventurous), for Conscientiousness (organized, responsible, hardworking, and careless), and for Agreeableness (helpful, warm, caring, softhearted, and sympathetic). These are not the exact items from the TIPI, which has commonly been used within the political science literature, but were the only personality measures available to capture the Big Five personality traits and provide a useful set of items for measuring personality. In comparison to the TIPI, which contains two items measuring each of the Big Five traits, the MIDUS survey contains 4 to 10 measures for each of the five traits, which provide reliable measures of each of the Big Five when aggregated.⁴ The adjectives contained in the MIDUS study were grouped into the Big Five traits by comparing them to personality items contained in Goldberg (1992), Saucier (1994), and Gosling et al. (2003). The items contained in the MIDUS study nicely correspond to adjectives that are often used in the psychology literature. In fact, many of the adjectives in the MIDUS study are identical to those used in well-known personality measurement batteries (e.g., talkative, assertive, worrying). For each Big Five trait, the corresponding measures were summed. To put the traits on a common scale, each measure was divided by its maximum (descriptive statistics shown in Table 1). For each Big Five trait, respondents only receive a personality score if they provided responses to all of the adjective questions. Reliabilities (Cronbach’s α) for each of the Big Five were as follows: Emotional Stability = .74, Extraversion = .84, Openness = .78, Agreeableness = .80, and Conscientiousness = .60. It is worth pointing out that although it would be ideal, especially in the interest of reducing measurement error, to use lengthy personality measurement batteries (e.g., 60 or 100 item batteries) in surveys, the inclusion of such batteries is costly in terms of time and money, which is why researchers in psychology and political science have used the shortened batteries like the TIPI.⁵ To the extent that larger personality measurement batteries for the Big Five are available, as is the case in the MIDUS study (30 total measures as opposed to the typical 10 from the TIPI), researchers should use them.⁶ Even those who use short personality batteries (5 or 10 items) recognize the usefulness of longer measurement batteries (see Gosling et al., 2003; Gerber et al., in press). It is important to note that the influence of personality measures on political behaviors and attitudes should be robust to different measurement approaches. Thus, while the use of the TIPI has become commonplace in political science (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, Raso et al., 2011; Gerber et al., 2012), researchers should be open to using alternative measurement batteries when the TIPI is not available.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for Model Variables (N = 2,619).

Variable	Mean	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Extraversion	0.740	0.133	0.275	1
Conscientiousness	0.853	0.112	0.250	1
Agreeableness	0.870	0.122	0.250	1
Emotional Stability	0.688	0.165	0.250	1
Openness	0.760	0.130	0.286	1
Age	47.29	12.94	21	75
White	0.891	0.311	0	1
Black	0.060	0.233	0	1
Asian	0.010	0.078	0	1
Native American	0.006	0.078	0	1
Income	17.88	9.990	1	31
Civic duty (vote)	8.163	2.577	0	10
Some grade school to high school	0.086	0.280	0	1
General Educational Development to graduated high school	0.288	0.453	0	1
Some college (no bachelor’s degree)	0.315	0.465	0	1
Grad college to doctorate or professional degree	0.312	0.463	0	1
Attend religious/spiritual services more than once a week	0.116	0.320	0	1
Attend religious/spiritual services about once a week	0.250	0.433	0	1
Attend religious/spiritual services one to three times a month	0.132	0.339	0	1
Attend religious/spiritual services less than once a month	0.300	0.457	0	1
Never attend religious/spiritual services	0.206	0.405	0	1
Male	0.490	0.500	0	1
Duty to keep informed	7.214	2.340	0	10

Dependent Variable and Controls

To measure the sense of civic duty, I follow Loewen and Dawes (2012) and Littvay, Weith, and Dawes (2011) and use the following question: Here is a list of hypothetical situations. Please rate how much obligation you would feel if they happened to you, using a 0 to 10 scale where 0 means “no obligation at all” and 10 means “a very great obligation.” If the situation does not apply to you, please think about how much obligation you would feel if you were in this situation: To vote in local and national elections. The response to this question is coded on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (no obligation at all) to 10 (a very great obligation). It is worth pointing out that the sense of civic duty appears to be “part of a more general sense of social obligation,” as evidenced by the fact that it loads quite well with other questions about social obligations in the survey, such as the extent to which people feel obligated to pay more for health care so that everyone can have access or volunteer time to social causes one supports (Loewen & Dawes, 2012, p. 367). In this article, the focus is on feelings of political obligation, but it may also be interesting to explore the link between personality and other feelings of social obligation in future studies. There is very little political content in the MIDUS study, so this was one of the only questions available to measure feelings of political obligation. I should note that the question used to measure civic duty refers to elections at two levels of government, which is not ideal since local and national elections differ in a number of important ways (e.g., levels of citizen engagement, media attention, etc.). This was the only question available to measure the sense of obligation to vote, but future studies might consider examining whether feelings of civic duty vary across different types of elections or whether the effects of personality traits on feelings of duty differ across local, state, and federal elections. Although my measure of duty is not identical to the questions used by Blais (2000) or Blais and Labbé St-Vincent (2011), it does approximate their item asking whether “it is every citizen’s duty to vote in an election.” I focus my analysis on the sense duty to vote but do provide some analysis of obligations to keep fully informed about public affairs, which the MIDUS Study also asked respondents about.

As controls, I include measures of respondent sex (coded 1 for men, 0 for women), frequency of religious attendance in a month (coded as a series of dummy variables), respondent age (coded in years), whether the respondent is White (coded 1 for yes, 0 for no), Black (coded 1 for yes, 0 for no), Asian (coded 1 for yes, 0 for no), or Native American (coded 1 for yes, 0 for no), income level (coded from 1 to 31, where 1 corresponds to no income and 31 corresponds to US$100,000 or more a year), and education level (coded as a series of dummy variables). Descriptive statistics for all of the variables are shown in Table 1. In addition, the distribution of the dependent variable, sense of civic duty to vote, is shown in Figure 1. The mean of the sense of duty measure is 8.16, which is very close to the mean (8.10) reported by Dalton (2008), who uses 11-point measure of duty to vote included on a 2005 survey. Although many people feel a strong sense of duty, there are some people who feel very little duty to vote. As a way of demonstrating that personality traits and respondent characteristics are not simply measuring the same thing (e.g., that personality traits are not just encapsulated in demographics), in Table 2 I provide the correlations between each of the personality items and a number of key demographic attributes. Generally speaking, the correlations are fairly small in magnitude. The average correlation across all items in the table is only .06. It appears that personality traits are not simply being captured by other respondent attributes that will be included in the explanatory model.

Figure 1.

Distribution of civic duty in MIDUS study.

Table 2.

Correlations Among Personality Measures and Respondent Demographics.

	Extraversion	Openness	Agreeableness	Conscientiousness	Emotional Stability
Male	.03	.08*	−.27*	−.11*	.13*
Age	−.01	−.06*	.06*	.04*	.16*
White	−.07*	−.06*	−.04*	.02	.02
Black	.04*	.04*	.04*	−.02	.04
Asian	.02	.03	.01	.01	.01
Native American	.02	−.01	.01	−.01	−.01
Income	.13*	.15*	−.11*	.10*	.08*

Note: *Statistically significant at p < .05 level.

Analysis

In Table 3, I present an ordinary least squares regression model where the sense of duty to vote is used as the dependent variable. Before moving forward, it is important to note that the results of the model are robust to a number of different estimation techniques (results shown in online appendix). At the outset, it is worth pointing out that many of the control variables perform as expected. For instance, older individuals and those who have higher levels of income express a stronger sense of civic duty than their counterparts.⁷ In addition, those who attend religious or spiritual services more than once a week, about once a week, one to three times a month, and less than once a month all have higher levels of civic duty than those who never attend religious or spiritual services. It is also worth noting that those who have graduated from high school or obtained a General Educational Development, those with some college education (but no bachelor’s degree), and those who have graduated college or obtained an advanced degree all express higher levels of civic duty than those with some grade or high school education. The relationships between education, religiosity, and duty are consistent with the results of previous models of civic duty (see, e.g., Blais, 2000). Below, I compare the effects of some of the control variables, many of which have been featured in previous models of civic duty, to the effects of personality traits.

Table 3.

Influence of Personality Traits on Sense of Civic Duty to Vote, Ordinary Least Squares Regression Model.

Variables	b (SE)
Extraversion	1.680* (0.527)
Conscientiousness	0.986* (0.561)
Agreeableness	1.046* (0.551)
Emotional Stability	0.407 (0.344)
Openness	1.165* (0.585)
Age	0.054* (0.004)
White	0.216 (0.361)
Black	0.647 (0.408)
Asian	−0.143 (0.616)
Native American	0.196 (0.806)
Income	0.014* (0.006)
Graduated college/advanced degree	1.429* (0.253)
Some college (no degree)	1.061* (0.255)
High school graduate/General Educational Development	0.856* (0.258)
Religious services more than once a week	1.122* (0.212)
Religious services about once a week	1.244* (0.167)
Religious services one to three times a month	0.798* (0.201)
Religious services less than once a month	0.760* (0.175)
Male	−0.169^# (0.119)
Constant	−0.703 (0.707)
No. of observations	2,619
F-statistic for model significance	20.81
Big Five joint significance test	16.28
Adjusted R²	0.170

Note: *Statistically significant at p < .05 level ^#Statistically significant at p < .10 level (all one-tailed tests, except for Openness, which uses a two-tailed test). Robust standard errors used. Omitted category for education is “some grade school” and omitted category for religious attendance is “never.”

Interestingly, personality traits are also predictive of the sense of civic duty. A joint F-test of the five personality variables reveals that they are collectively statistically significant (F-statistic is 16.28). What this tells us is that the personality trait measures provide explanatory power above and beyond the model that includes just respondent demographic attributes. As anticipated, those who with high scores on the Conscientious trait feel a stronger sense of civic duty than their counterparts. The coefficient is positively signed and statistically significant at the p < .05 level. This nicely comports with the theoretical expectation outlined above that Conscientious people prefer to abide by norms and rules. The coefficient on the Agreeableness trait is also statistically significant (p < .05) and positively signed, indicating that whose who are more agreeable feel a stronger sense of civic duty than their counterparts. This makes sense given that people high on this trait tend to have a prosocial or communal orientation. Indeed, Carlo et al. (2005) find that people with high scores on the Agreeableness trait are more likely to volunteer than their counterparts.

When it comes to Extraversion, the coefficient is positive and statistically significant at the p < .05 level. Although Extraverts participate in a wide range of political activities at higher rates than their counterparts (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, Raso et al., 2011; Mondak, 2010; Mondak et al., 2010), it appears that they also hold a stronger sense of duty. The positive influence of Extraversion on civic duty is consistent with Blais and Labbé St-Vincent’s (2011) finding that shyness, one component of the Extraversion trait, was negatively related to their measure of civic duty. It appears that those who are “less integrated into their social milieu” are “less exposed to social pressure for fulfilling one’s civic duty” (Blais & Labbé St-Vincent, 2011, p. 401).

It is worth pointing out that the final two components of the Big Five—Openness and Emotional Stability—show mixed results. Although Emotional Stability does not have a statistically significant effect on the sense of civic duty, Openness does appear to be related to duty. Emotional Stability has been one of the most inconsistent predictors of political behavior and may simply have little relevance to politics. The coefficient on the Openness trait is positively signed and statistically significant. Above, I pointed out conflicting expectations regarding the relationship between Openness and the sense of duty. It appears that people with high scores on Openness hold a stronger sense of civic duty than their counterparts, all else being equal. This may be due to the fact that people with high levels of Openness tend to be intellectual and are therefore likely to appreciate civic obligations. Further research needs to be done on the specific components of Openness that shape the sense of civic duty.

To get a sense of the substantive effects of personality traits on the sense of duty, Figure 2 plots the effects of the four statistically significant personality traits on civic duty as they move from their minimum to maximum values. Theoretically, the personality measures can range from 0 to 1, although I should note that none of the personality measures actually take on a minimum value of 0 (the lowest minimum score across the five traits is .25). In the graphs, the minimum for each measure represents the lowest score that is actually observed in the data (see Table 1 for a list of the minimum scores for each trait). Overall, the magnitude of the effects for each trait is fairly similar, although Extraversion has the most pronounced effect on the sense of duty, followed by Openness, Agreeableness, and then Conscientiousness. Although Conscientiousness does have a statistically significant effect on civic duty, it is a bit surprising that the effect of this trait is not as large or bigger than the effect exerted by Extraversion.⁸

Figure 2.

Effects of personality on sense of civic duty.

To put the magnitude of the personality effects in context, it is worth comparing the effects of the personality measures to a number of key variables identified by past research (and the model in Table 3) as important predictors of civic duty, including age and income. Comparisons can be made by generating the predicted levels of civic duty when each variable takes on its minimum and maximum value, taking the difference, and comparing those differences across independent variables. When it comes to age, the predicted level of civic duty when age takes its minimum value is 6.77 and the predicted level of civic duty when age takes on its maximum value is 9.45, a difference of 2.68. When it comes to income, the predicted level of civic duty when income takes its minimum value is 7.81 and the predicted level of civic duty when income takes on its maximum value is 8.21, a difference of .40. The personality traits that have the largest effects on the sense of duty are Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness. When it comes to Extraversion, the predicted level of civic duty when Extraversion takes its minimum value is 7.25 and the predicted level of civic duty when Extraversion takes on its maximum value is 8.43, a difference of 1.18. When it comes to Agreeableness, the predicted level of civic duty when Agreeableness takes its minimum value is 7.39 and the predicted level of civic duty when Agreeableness takes on its maximum value is 8.12, a difference of .73. Finally, when it comes to Openness, the predicted level of civic duty when Openness takes its minimum value is 7.48 and the predicted level of civic duty when Openness takes on its maximum value is 8.30, a difference of .82. Although the substantive effects of personality are not quite as large as the effect exerted by age, the effects of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness do exceed the impact of income.

Examining an Additional Measure of Civic Duty

Thus far, my analysis has focused on the sense of obligation to vote, which no doubt reflects an important aspect of civic virtue. Of course, voting represents just one component of the overarching sense of civic obligation that people feel, and it is certainly reasonable to think that people may feel different levels of obligation to engage in other political or civic activities. Indeed, Dalton (2008) points out that people may feel different levels of obligation to participate in voluntary organizations or to be active in politics above and beyond voting. Although there were very few questions about feelings of political duty in the MIDUS study, there is one additional question related to political life that allows for additional tests of the relationships between individual personality traits and civic orientations. Using the same question format as was employed to measure the sense of duty to vote, the MIDUS study also asked respondents how much obligation they feel to “keep fully informed about national news and public issues.” Responses range from none (coded as 0) to very great (coded as 10). The mean of this variable is 7.21 (standard deviation of 2.34), which is slightly less than the mean of the duty to vote measure (8.16). Although this measure taps a different element of civic virtue than the voting measure, it is highly correlated with the obligation to vote item used in the above analyses (Pearson’s r = .53, p < .05). Given that personality traits affect the sense of duty to vote, they should also influence feelings of obligation to stay informed about public affairs. I expect the Big Five traits to perform just as they did above. In Table 4, I replicate the model from Table 3 but use the measure of obligation to stay informed as the dependent variable.

Table 4.

Influence of Personality Traits on Sense of Duty to Keep Informed About Public Affairs, Ordinary Least Squares Regression Model.

Variables	b (SE)
Extraversion	1.705* (0.446)
Conscientiousness	0.679^# (0.463)
Agreeableness	1.685* (0.473)
Emotional Stability	−0.215 (0.299)
Openness	2.091* (0.505)
Age	0.052* (0.004)
White	−0.283 (0.270)
Black	−0.066 (0.333)
Asian	−0.248 (0.572)
Native American	−0.354 (0.618)
Income	−0.002 (0.005)
Graduated college/advanced degree	1.002* (0.211)
Some college (no degree)	0.667* (0.211)
High school graduate/General Educational Development	0.503* (0.211)
Religious services more than once a week	0.369* (0.175)
Religious services about once a week	0.310* (0.146)
Religious services one to three times a month	0.300* (0.172)
Religious services less than once a month	0.482* (0.143)
Male	0.213* (0.102)
Constant	−0.725 (0.596)
No. of observations	2,627
F-statistic for model significance	25.03
Big Five joint significance test	31.04
Adjusted R²	0.160

Note: *Statistically significant at p < .05 level. ^#Statistically significant at p < .10 level (all one-tailed tests, except for Openness, which uses a two-tailed test). Robust standard errors used. Omitted category for education is “some grade school” and omitted category for religious attendance is “never.”

Overall, the results in Table 4 illustrate that personality matters to the sense of obligation to stay informed about public affairs. In fact, the direction and significance of the Big Five traits in Table 4 closely mirror the results in Table 3, and a joint significance test of the Big Five traits indicates that they significantly improve the explanatory power of the model (F-statistic of 31.04). Once again, Extraversion has a positive and statistically significant effect on the sense of duty. Openness and Agreeableness also exert positive and statistically significant effects on the obligation to stay informed. When it comes to Conscientiousness, the coefficient is positively signed, although it is significant at p = .07. The effect of Emotional Stability is small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. Although age has the largest substantive impact on the sense of duty to stay informed (standardized beta of .28), personality traits do exert important effects as well. The standardized betas for Extraversion and Agreeableness are .10 and .09, respectively. The standardized beta for Openness is .12, and the standardized beta for Conscientiousness is .03. Overall, it appears that personality traits are an important antecedent of the sense of civic duty that people feel in the realm of politics.

Conclusion

Political scientists have increasingly come to recognize that broad political orientations, such as the sense of civic duty or obligation, influence political behaviors. A number of researchers have convincingly shown that the sense of civic duty exerts an important influence on democratic participation (Blais, 2000; Blais & Achen, 2010). This has been illustrated using observational (Blais, 2000) and experimental data (Panagopoulos, 2011). Recently, political scientists have also begun to explore the influence of deep-seated individual differences on political attitudes, orientations, and behaviors. Loewen and Dawes (2012) have explored the heritability of the sense of civic duty but note that figuring out which personality traits are associated with the sense of civic duty will be a useful piece of the puzzle. In this article, I have shown that personality exerts an important influence on the sense of civic duty. Although political scientists have explored the underpinnings of range of important political attitudes and orientations, they have not devoted much attention to the antecedents of civic duty (Blais & Labbé St-Vincent, 2011). The influence of personality traits on this particular orientation to politics has received even less attention. It makes sense that personality traits would be causally prior to political orientations like duty, since they develop fairly early in life and are quite stable even at a young age (Pullman, Raudsepp, & Allik, 2006). Indeed, recent work by Gerber, Huber, Doherty, and Dowling (2013) shows that personality traits are remarkably stable in political surveys and that they are not influenced by political considerations, such as shifts in the balance of political power.

Researchers should continue to investigate how personality traits influence political attitudes and orientations. In addition, more work should be put into fleshing out the model outlined by Loewen and Dawes (2012, p. 370) wherein biological factors, personality traits, and political orientations shape the decision to vote. Interesting work has already started to emerge on the interplay between such factors in shaping political behaviors and attitudes of interest (Hatemi, Alford, Hibbing, Martin, & Eaves, 2009; Littvay et al., 2011; Weber et al., 2011). Finally, because surveys that include political measures and measures of personality traits are not common, scholars should work to develop surveys that include these items. In addition to allowing scholars to test new hypotheses about how personality influences political behavior, such data sets with enable replications of this study and of other recent studies on personality and political behavior. They will also enable analyses of the interrelationships between personality, other deeply rooted factors, attitudes, and behaviors (see Blais & Labbé St-Vincent, 2011).

In thinking about the implications of the findings presented above, it is important to return to the discussion at the beginning of this article about recommendations on how to increase the sense of civic duty among people. Given the importance of this political orientation, it is not surprising that scholars and policymakers have sought to understand what kinds of interventions and techniques can be used to cultivate a sense of civic duty, especially among young people (Campbell, 2005). Thus far, many of the proposed strategies focus on improving civics curricula, fostering a civic environment within school settings, and creating opportunities for service learning. In this article, I have shown that personality traits, which are present early on in life and stable over time, have an impact on feelings of civic duty. One might interpret this finding to mean that interventions aimed at boosting feelings of civic obligation are unlikely to be effective, since feelings of duty are so deeply rooted within people. I would argue against such an interpretation. While personality is certainly difficult to change, knowing what a person’s personality traits are may be particularly helpful when designing interventions aimed at boosting feelings of civic duty. For instance, certain messages aimed at increasing feelings of obligation may be very effective for people with high scores on a given personality dimension but completely ineffective for people with low scores. Similarly, service-learning opportunities may be effective at enhancing feelings of civic duty among people with certain personality traits but may actually diminish feelings of civic duty for people with other personality attributes. Finally, knowing the types of people whose personality attributes predispose them to feel a weak sense of civic duty may help researchers target those individuals who are most likely to benefit from interventions aimed at increasing feelings of duty. Since feelings of civic duty are such an important component of public life, it is important that scholars continue to try to understand where the sense of duty comes from.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Aaron C. Weinschenk is assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin—Green Bay. His research focuses on political participation, mayoral elections, campaign effects, and political partisanship. His work has appeared in Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, American Politics Research, and a number of other journals.

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