The Prejudiced Personality? Using the Big Five to Predict Susceptibility to Stereotyping Behavior

Abstract

Although long privileged by scholarship in psychology, personality has only recently been considered as an influential factor for political orientations and actions. In this article, we consider personality’s influence on another important tendency: the proclivity to engage in stereotyping and prejudicial thinking. Using a personality battery included for the first time on the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES), we examine the tendencies of particular personality types to stereotype. Results suggest that the two most politically relevant traits (Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness) are consistent predictors of authoritarian tendencies, which, in turn, produce indirect effects of personality on group-centric policy positions, over and above the effects through political predispositions such as partisanship. Our findings demonstrate the important role of group stereotyping in mediating the effects of personality on policy support.

Keywords

Big Five stereotyping group centrism

Typically, citizens are viewed as unconcerned with, and ignorant of, the basic aspects of day-to-day politics. They may demonstrate short-term increases in knowledge during periods of high political salience, such as scandals, or the run-up to an election. More often than not, however, citizens simply rely on heuristic shortcuts, one of the most ubiquitous being group sentiment, a fact which has not been lost on political elites. Unfortunately, group-centric thinking cuts both ways. The reliance on group sentiment may allow citizens to transcend limitations in their political information, and make decisions as if they are also informed, as posited by Converse (1964) in his seminal work. Yet, such tendencies may also lead to an overreliance on group stereotypes, which may then be exploited by elites. Furthermore, a reliance on group considerations as a heuristic at the expense of actual information may not only lead to poorer decisions by citizens, but also the perpetuation of negative social stereotypes, which, after repeated rehearsal, may even become chronically accessible in memory, leaving citizens helpless to avoid thinking stereotypically.

Although research in social psychology has uncovered a number of internal motivations that affect an individual’s tendency to engage in discriminatory or stereotypical thinking, in this article, we consider one that has not been considered in great detail—the role of personality. Using data from the ANES, which included a personality battery for the first time in the 2012-2013 surveys, we examine the relationship of personality traits to both precursors of prejudice, such as authoritarianism, as well as specific group stereotypes. In addition, we consider whether the effect of personality on political attitudes for which group-centric thinking is relevant can be mediated through stereotyping behavior in addition to partisanship.

Through this focus, we offer a corrective to the conventional wisdom on the connection between personality traits and political attitudes. The classic view of the two most relevant political personality traits (Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness) has been that their political influence derives primarily from their connection to ideological positions (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2012; Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, & Ha, 2010; Mondak & Halperin, 2008). Mondak (2010) noted that the personality tendencies of those high in Openness to Experience are in stark contrast to the tendency of “small-c conservatives” to want deliberate and measured action and a preservation of the status quo. A similar argument in the reverse is made for Conscientiousness and liberalism.

Although we do not object to this characterization of the relationship between Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness in most political arenas, we propose that it fails to fully explain the complexities of the relationship between personality and political attitudes. In particular, when group identities are brought to bear, the influence of these personality traits occurs both through the traditional association with party identification as well as through group-centric views, including anti-Black stereotyping and, most clearly, authoritarianism.

Results from a series of analyses suggest that the Big Five personality traits consistently predict other social orientations thought to derive from personality, including authoritarianism and anti-Black affect. In turn, these traits predict support for a variety of group-centric policy positions, such as support for the Affordable Care Act, welfare, and capital punishment. Finally, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and Agreeableness exert effects on group-centric issue opinions, mediated through both group-centric attitudes and partisanship. Thus, the idea that Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience influence policy primarily through the ideological or partisan routes must be amended when considering policies concerning salient group identities.

Personality and Politics

In recent years, research in personality has largely rested on the “Big Five” framework, which distills personality into five discrete dimensions. As outlined by Goldberg (1990), the “Big Five” traits are Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (sometimes referred to by its converse, “Emotional Stability”; Barondes, 2011; Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, et al., 2011). Across disciplines, however, research on personality generally, and the “Big Five” specifically, can be distilled to four basic assumptions: that traits exist and are measureable, vary across individuals, shape behavior, and can be expressed by people describing themselves or others (Gerber et al., 2011a, p. 266).

Although long privileged by researchers in psychology, only recently have scholars begun to consider the role of personality in political behavior (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011a; Gerber et al., 2010; Mondak, 2010; Mondak & Halperin, 2008; Mondak, Hibbing, Canache, Seligson, & Anderson, 2010). Such work has done much to inform our understanding of the effects of personality in citizens’ political lives. Previously, long-standing orientations such as partisanship and ideology were thought to be “unmoved movers” motivating citizens’ views of politics. The application of personality has revealed the potential for deeper motivations for citizens’ actions. Findings suggest that aspects of personality predict orientations such as partisanship and ideology (Gerber et al., 2012; Gerber et al., 2010; Mondak & Halperin, 2008), political engagement and knowledge (Beier & Ackerman, 2001; Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011b; Hambrick, Pink, Meinz, Pettibone, & Oswald, 2008), and participation (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, et al., 2011; Mondak et al., 2010; Vecchione & Caprara, 2009). Personality has also been shown to moderate the effects of environmental factors such as campaign tone or social network composition on political beliefs and actions (Mondak, 2010; Mondak et al., 2010), and how citizens respond to persuasive appeals (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, Dowling, & Panagopoulos, 2013).

Generally, the literature in political science treats personality as an exogenous factor operating as a lens through which the world is viewed, and consequently having a powerful effect on adult social orientations (but see Verhulst, Eaves, & Hatemi, 2012). Yet, the focus of such scholarship has been primarily on tangible outcomes, such as participation or levels of political knowledge. What work has looked at more abstract concepts has largely focused on identifications such as partisanship or ideology (Gerber et al., 2010; Mondak, 2010; but see Gerber et al., 2010, for a look at the relationship between personality and ideological domains).

An important exception to personality work focusing on symbolic identities is Gerber et al.’s (2010) work on issue domains. In this work, the authors look not only at symbolic ideological identification but also at economic and social liberalism. Interestingly, the authors find consistent relationships between Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience with symbolic ideology as well as operational social and economic ideology, but the results are mixed (and occasionally conflicting in the case of Agreeableness) for the other three traits. This work underscores the importance and value of examining policy orientations more closely than symbolic identities, yet the grouping of policy positions into economic and social is but one way to categorize policy positions. It also demonstrates the importance of a focus on understanding the effects of Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. Without discounting this work, we believe a focus on group-centric policies and the relationship between personality and these opinions is important. Given the existing literature on group-centric thinking generally, and racialized thinking more specifically, it seems important to understand the extent to which personality relates to such internalized biases. As we examine the interplay between personality and politics, past scholars carefully examined the differences between symbolic and operational ideological positions, and the political divisions between social and economic ideology. We propose that, in addition to these important positions, personality also explains an individual’s proclivity toward or away from policy positions driven by stereotyping and group-centric behavior.

The Power of Group Centrism and Stereotypes

As noted above, the lions’ share of citizens is thought to at best be indifferent to politics, relying on informational shortcuts to arrive at relevant political judgments. Although there exists a veritable “menu of choice” with respect to heuristic cues citizens could make use of to arrive at opinions, the most ubiquitous heuristic remains groups in society. Groups (and group-centric thinking) are so relevant for opinion because social divisions are highly visible, and are highlighted in political rhetoric and media coverage. This is argued to produce a process referred to by Winter as “group implication,” where cognitive connections are drawn between thoughts of the group and a given issue (2005, 2006, 2008). These connections are quite easily drawn, and group affect becomes a potent predictor of issue opinions even through a simple frame (Nelson & Kinder, 1996).

Although relying on thoughts of social groups may seem relatively innocuous, and in fact a net positive for the function of our democracy, if it improves the decisions made by citizens, there clearly is more to the story—specifically, the content of the group considerations that citizens are relying on. The number of citizens who would appear outwardly prejudiced has and continues to decline, as social desirability biases discourage explicitly prejudicial sentiments (Kinder & Sanders, 1996), while tolerance has increased (Gibson, 2013). However, even the outwardly unbiased citizens are familiar with existing social stereotypes (Devine, 1989), which may then render even the most outwardly unbiased capable of stereotyping and prejudice (Arkes & Tetlock, 2004). With the potential for citizens to engage in prejudicial thinking as a result of the group-centric nature of politics, it becomes increasingly important to consider whether there are prior characteristics that predispose citizens to engage in more or less prejudicial thinking.

Big Five Traits and Prejudicial Thinking

Although unexamined in the literature on political science, a small but growing literature in psychology has begun to consider the relationship of personality (and personality-based orientations) to prejudicial beliefs. This more recent scholarship has deep roots in the seminal work on the authoritarian personality by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950), which posited that the interplay among the superego, ego, and id, in particular combinations, predisposed individuals to fascistic behavior. Ultimately, issues with the psychometric properties of the derived F scale, and a lack of empirical support, lead the theory to fall out of favor until being revived by Altemeyer (1981). His Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale was built upon aspects of the prior F scale, and proved to be a powerful and consistent predictor of prejudicial thinking.

Yet, following these impactful works, scholarship on the topic has languished until only very recently. The predominant focus in personality psychology has been to explain determinants of prejudice, such as authoritarianism and social dominance, or more generalized prejudices. Studies relating personality traits to more specific prejudices, such as racism or sexism are scarce, given the assumption that prejudices may be generalized across targets (see Akrami, Ekehammar, & Bergh, 2011).

Although useful as a baseline for deriving expectations for the relationship between personality and a tendency to stereotype, this approach is somewhat limited in its treatment of prejudice as a homogeneous entity (but see Gallego and Pardos-Prado, 2014, for an exception). The endorsement of social stereotypes varies not only by the group being considered but by the social context of the evaluator as well. This focus on the general by previous work leaves a fairly sizable lacuna in the extant literature, one that this article seeks to engage with.

A drawback to the generalized treatment of prejudice in the literature is with respect to the derivation of theoretically motivated expectations. It would seem that the most prudent approach, given the exploratory nature of the study at hand, is to base expectations on more general findings regarding the relationship of personality to prejudice. We also seek to clarify the mechanism by which personality influences group-centric policy positions in light of evidence demonstrating the personality–prejudice connection.

Expectations

How should we expect personality to affect the endorsement and expression of prejudice and social stereotypes? Although connections between personality and such orientations have not appeared to cut across all traits in previous work, there is likely sufficient evidence to derive testable expectations for each of the Big Five traits. However, given the complexity of deriving, explaining, and testing hypotheses for all five traits, we focus our attention on the two domains, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness, that have emerged as the most consistently predictive of political attitudes. Although the remaining domains (Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) are important at times for understanding behavior, we note that Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness are likely the most fruitful ground for additional exploration.

Openness to Experience is “the breadth, depth, originality, and complexity of an individuals’ mental and experiential life” (Gerber et al., 2011a, p. 267). This characteristic relates to one’s views of the world around oneself, how open one is to learning, and one’s general cognitive orientations. Those higher in Openness are predisposed to creativity (George & Zhou, 2001), curiosity, and imagination (McCrae & Costa, 1985), valuing experiences and exploration of the unfamiliar (Piedmont, 1998). Politically, lower levels of this characteristic has been connected to conservatism (McCrae, 1996), whereas higher levels predict a tendency toward liberalism (Alford & Hibbing, 2007). Openness is also negatively related to RWA and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Akrami & Ekehammar, 2006). In addition, those higher in Openness demonstrate a greater tolerance for diversity (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008), as well as a greater tendency to disconfirm negative social stereotypes (Flynn, 2005). Subsequently, we expect that higher levels of openness should decrease general prejudicial orientations as well as support for specific social stereotypes for all groups.

Although Openness to Experience positively predicts Democratic identification and liberalism, we believe that the full explanatory weight of the personality trait rests with both political and group-centric beliefs. That is, when assessing policy proposals regarding social groups, open-minded individuals are likely to rely both on their political predispositions as well as their generalized (positive) outlook toward the affected social groups. In practice, this appears as a mediated personality effect through partisanship as well as group orientation.

In contrast, Conscientiousness is “socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates task- and goal-directed behavior” (Gerber et al., 2011a, p. 267). Conscientious individuals are said to be efficient, rational, and well-organized (Piedmont, 1998), with higher levels of performance in school and jobs (John et al., 2008). Those higher in Conscientiousness also tend to be risk averse (Kowert & Hermann, 1997). Politically, Conscientiousness is thought to act in the inverse manner as Openness to Experience: Higher levels lead to beliefs in personal responsibility, tradition, virtue, and thus conservatism (Mondak, 2010). Individuals higher in Conscientiousness provide support for this view (Stenner, 2005). In addition, those higher in Conscientiousness preferred Bush to Kerry in the 2004 election (Barbaranelli, Caprara, Vecchione, & Fraley, 2007).

Nothing in the accepted definition of Conscientiousness applies specifically to group stereotypes in particular. It would also be imprudent to assume that a relationship between Conscientiousness and opinions linked to social groups is indicative of a prejudicial orientation, when it could merely be an expression of principled conservatism (see Sniderman & Piazza, 1993, but also see Kinder & Sanders, 1996, for a rebuttal). Beliefs in the value of hard work and goal setting, along with risk aversion, need not equate to attitudes about African Americans or Muslim immigrants, for instance. Our belief, therefore, is that the effects of Conscientiousness on policy attitudes work primarily through partisanship, rather than group-centric beliefs. This contrasts sharply with the expectations for Openness to Experience, where the expectation is for multiple mediation routes.

In contrast to Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness, existing work on the remaining three traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness) is relatively mixed. Therefore, we propose a research question on the potential influence of these traits on stereotyping behavior.¹ We remain agnostic on the potential for Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Extraversion to predict stereotyping behavior. The theoretical picture for these traits is less clear than for Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness. None exhibits particularly strong, consistent connections with stereotyping. Furthermore, we do not have good theoretical reasons to expect that the empirical influence of these traits should be carried through stereotyping rather than party identification. Rather than put forth specific directional hypotheses, we explore the following research question:

Research Question 1: Through what mechanisms do Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Extraversion influence policy positions of U.S. citizens?

These expectations are important because they allow for a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the role personality plays in the formation of policy attitudes. The existence of a “prejudiced personality” may be intriguing, but the more fundamental question rests on whether personality directly influences prejudicial thinking and, if so, how does personality affect policy attitudes that tap group-centric beliefs? We move now to our empirical test of these expectations.

Data and Method

The core analyses in this article make use of the 2012 ANES, which for the first time included a personality assessment, the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; see Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swan, 2003). This has the advantage of examining the relationship of personality traits to political beliefs in the context of a large, nationally representative survey. The 2012 ANES, unlike previous iterations, was split between a face-to-face sample, consisting of 2,054 respondents across the pre- and postelection waves, and a web-based sample of 3,860 respondents across the two survey waves. The subsequent analyses examine the complete sample of 5,914 respondents, while including a control variable for mode of interview.

Dependent Variables

Initially, we examine the relationship between personality and authoritarianism, as well as stereotyping of African Americans. The personality-based orientations capture individual predispositions toward authoritarianism in child rearing (Feldman & Stenner, 1997), whereas group stereotypes include respondent’s views toward African Americans as hardworking/lazy and intelligent/unintelligent. Although the connection between personality and authoritarianism has been documented previously, it has not been done with a nationally representative survey such as the ANES; as a consequence, the initial analysis is a replication, followed by extensions after the ANES has been validated. We also include party identification as a dependent variable for a comparison with past samples and effect sizes, as all dependent variables are rescaled to run from 0 to 1.

In addition to considering how personality affects the explicit expression of prejudicial thinking, we also test whether the personality–prejudice connection mediates the effect of personality on political opinions. The tendency of elites to link groups to issues, either explicitly or implicitly (Schneider & Ingram, 1993) has produced mental connections in the minds of citizens (such as the link between race and crime—see Hurwitz & Peffley, 1997, 2005) that become meaningful to examine when considering the real impact of the personality–prejudice connection. Using items contained within the ANES, we examine respondent’s opposition to two items with explicit ties to racial groups, their opposition to affirmative action programs in college admissions and in the workplace, as well as three items that are arguably linked to group considerations in the minds of many, but are not explicitly group targeted, namely, their opposition to increased welfare spending, aid to the poor, and their support for the use of the death penalty.

We argue generally that opinion on these issues has become racialized, triggering group-centric thinking automatically for many citizens when evaluating the issue, as a consequence of prior experiences, including interactions with others (Le Pelley et al., 2010), as well as through media coverage (Lasorsa & Dai, 2007). This process of group implication arguably produces mental connections between group considerations and issues that are activated automatically when evaluating said issues (Winter, 2008). Subsequent research examining the predictive power of racial attitudes has shown strong linkages between racial animus and opposition to affirmative action (Federico, 2002; Federico & Sidanius, 2002; Kinder & Sanders, 1996), welfare spending (Gilens, 1995, 1996, 1999), the poor (Clawson & Trice, 2000; Iyengar, 1990), and the death penalty (Peffley & Hurwitz, 2007).

We would, however, be remiss if we did not acknowledge a competing argument to the group-centric thinking framework we have advanced. Others have argued that opposition to race-targeted programs is not due to prejudicial thinking, but instead is driven by ideological principle (Sniderman & Carmines, 1997; Sniderman & Piazza, 1993), with some work suggesting that the differential results depend on the subgroups being considered (Feldman & Huddy, 2005). As a means of accounting for this possible alternative explanation, we include controls for partisanship and demographics in our models.

In addition to these issues that have been more systematically demonstrated to trigger group-centric thinking by previous scholarship, we also examine support for the Affordable Care Act, a policy that has become highly racialized through its direct affiliation with the chief architect of the legislation (President Obama) rather than the perceived recipients (Tessler, 2012), a process that is arguably driven by racial spillover effects (Tessler, 2015) This connection has arguably made an ethnocentric, “us against them” mind-set a highly significant predictor of these attitudes (Kam & Kinder, 2007; Kinder & Kam, 2009), leading us to believe that a prejudicial orientation should be activated when retrieving an opinion for many citizens.

Independent Variables

The key personality measures are captured using the brief, TIPI battery, which measures the Big Five personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) using 10 items, two per trait.² The two items are averaged for each of the overarching Big Five traits, and then are rescaled to run from 0 (lowest level of the trait) to 1 (highest level of the trait) for ease of comparability. Summary statistics for the Big Five items appear in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics.

	M	SD	Cronbach’s α	n
Full sample
Neuroticism	0.35	0.30	.52	5,487
Extraversion	0.52	0.31	.45	5,487
Openness	0.64	0.27	.38	5,490
Agreeableness	0.69	0.25	.28	5,490
Conscientiousness	0.77	0.26	.52	5,492
Face-to-face
Neuroticism	0.34	0.32	.43	1,921
Extraversion	0.57	0.29	.31	1,922
Openness	0.68	0.28	.31	1,921
Agreeableness	0.69	0.27	.16	1,924
Conscientiousness	0.77	0.29	.47	1,923
Web
Neuroticism	0.35	0.28	.58	3,566
Extraversion	0.50	0.29	.52	3,565
Openness	0.61	0.25	.42	3,569
Agreeableness	0.69	0.25	.37	3,566
Conscientiousness	0.77	0.25	.55	3,569

On average, of the Big Five traits, respondents appear to be lowest in Neuroticism, and highest in Conscientiousness, with the other traits falling in the middle. In addition, both are also the most reliable, although alpha values for all the scales are low, even considering that they are based upon only two items.³ Given the novelty of the inclusion of Big Five items on the ANES, and the multiple modes of the survey raises some concerns that there may be issues not with the items themselves, but measuring personality across the multiple modes (face-to-face vs. web-based survey). In fact, as we delve a little deeper, we see that although the means are roughly comparable across mode of interview, those obtained via web survey are more reliable than those obtained in a face-to-face interview. Given this observed difference, it seems reasonable to include a control variable for mode of interview in the analyses.⁴

The Prejudiced Personality?

As an initial consideration of the relationship of personality to prejudicial thinking, we begin by regressing the general prejudicial orientations (authoritarianism and African American stereotyping) on the Big Five items. In addition, models include controls for gender, age, education, income, race, and partisanship. As these models replicate previous findings in psychology, they should prove as further validation of the measurement of personality in the ANES. Results from a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions appear in Table 2.

Table 2.

Personality and Stereotyping.

	African American stereotyping	Authoritarianism
Openness to Experience	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.15*** (0.03)
Conscientiousness	−0.00 (0.02)	0.15*** (0.03)
Extraversion	−0.03 (0.02)	0.07* (0.03)
Agreeableness	−0.12*** (0.02)	0.07* (0.03)
Neuroticism	0.05* (0.02)	0.08** (0.03)
Gender (male)	0.02* (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)
Age	−0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)
Education	−0.01* (0.00)	−0.08*** (0.01)
Income	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00*** (0.00)
Race (White)	0.04*** (0.01)	−0.13*** (0.01)
Party identification	0.01*** (0.00)	0.02*** (0.00)
Interview mode	0.02* (0.01)	−0.00 (0.01)
Constant	0.46*** (0.04)	0.75*** (0.05)
n	5,189	5,185
R ²	.070	.180

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

When considering the relationship of personality to prejudicial orientations, we see results generally consistent with prior research. Within authoritarianism, all five personality domains are significant predictors of the dependent variables, with higher levels of Openness to Experience predicting lower levels of authoritarianism and Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism all predicting higher levels of authoritarianism. The results are more mixed for stereotyping of African Americans, with Agreeableness showing a negative relationship with stereotyping and Neuroticism exhibiting a positive relationship.

Personality and Group-Centric Opinion

But what does this mean for the substance of politics? Is there a meaningful connection between personality traits and group-centric thinking? Efforts to connect personality to political beliefs beyond partisanship and ideology have been mixed at best (but see Gerber et al., 2010), with the most consistently compelling evidence connecting Openness to more liberal dispositions. To explore this, we estimate a series of models examining issues for which group-centric thinking has become relevant (affirmative action, welfare, the death penalty, and the Affordable Care Act), evaluating the degree to which personality traits have a direct effect on opinion, or simply operate indirectly through social stereotypes when shaping opinion. These results appear in Table 3.

Table 3.

Personality and Group-Centric Opinion.

	Welfare	Affirmative action (work)	Affirmative action (university)	Capital punishment	Affordable Care Act
Openness to Experience	−0.03 (0.03)	−0.03 (0.03)	−0.05 (0.03)	−0.09* (0.04)	−0.02 (0.03)
Conscientiousness	0.12*** (0.03)	0.07* (0.03)	0.09** (0.03)	0.22*** (0.04)	0.08* (0.03)
Extraversion	0.03 (0.02)	−0.03 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)	0.11** (0.03)	0.01 (0.03)
Agreeableness	−0.04 (0.03)	−0.01 (0.03)	−0.04 (0.03)	−0.09* (0.04)	−0.04 (0.03)
Neuroticism	−0.03 (0.02)	0.02 (0.03)	0.00 (0.03)	0.02 (0.03)	0.02 (0.03)
Gender (male)	0.01 (0.01)	0.00 (0.01)	−0.00 (0.01)	0.03* (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)
Age	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)
Education	0.00 (0.00)	−0.01* (0.00)	−0.01 (0.00)	−0.05*** (0.01)	−0.02*** (0.01)
Income	0.00*** (0.00)	0.00*** (0.00)	0.00*** (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00* (0.00)
Race (White)	0.04*** (0.01)	0.15*** (0.01)	0.13*** (0.01)	0.08*** (0.02)	0.05*** (0.01)
Party identification	0.04*** (0.00)	0.04*** (0.00)	0.04*** (0.00)	0.03*** (0.00)	0.11*** (0.00)
Interview mode	0.03*** (0.01)	−0.02 (0.01)	−0.02 (0.01)	0.03 (0.02)	0.04** (0.01)
Constant	0.26*** (0.04)	0.45*** (0.05)	0.43*** (0.05)	0.46*** (0.06)	0.04 (0.05)
n	5,157	5,162	5,147	5,090	5,159
R ²	.204	.198	.183	.097	.407

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Interestingly, the most consistent personality predictor of group-based policy attitudes is Conscientiousness. Across all five dependent variables, Conscientiousness is a significant predictor of more conservative attitudes. The strongest effect emerges for beliefs about capital punishment, where movement from the lowest to highest score on Conscientiousness produces a 22 percentage point shift in approval of capital punishment. These findings accord well with previous work showing a strong connection between Conscientiousness and conservatism, demonstrating that this connection plays out in policy attitudes as well.

Contrary to expectations, Openness to Experience only exhibits a significant effect on group-centric opinion in the case of capital punishment.⁵ Here, movement along the entire personality scale decreases support for capital punishment by nine percentage points. Across the other four issue positions, the direction of the coefficient is correct (negative, indicating higher values of Openness to Experience result in more liberal policy positions) but the coefficients fail to achieve statistical significance.

The other three personality domains show weaker correlations with policy attitudes. The effects of Extraversion are mixed, though it does predict more conservative capital punishment attitudes. Agreeableness, like Openness to Experience, is a consistent predictor of liberal policy attitudes, with statistically significant relationships between Agreeableness and capital punishment. Finally, for Neuroticism, no significant effects are found, although the mediation analysis that follows offers a potential answer for this lack of relationship.

In all, the results for personality and its effects on group-based policy attitudes are mixed, but generally consistent with prior work. Conscientiousness exhibits the strongest relationship with conservative attitudes, whereas Openness to Experience is less consistently predictive of liberal attitudes. These analyses, however, fail to consider whether the connection between Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and group-centric policy beliefs run through partisanship or stereotyping beliefs such as racial antipathy or authoritarianism. Furthermore, for Neuroticism, the personality trait works in opposing directions on partisanship, authoritarianism, and racial animosity. Thus, for group-centric beliefs, it is possible for no direct relationship to emerge between personality and policy attitudes because of conflicting considerations. To understand these relationships, we employ a mediation approach to disentangle the mechanism for the effects of personality on policy beliefs through partisanship, racial attitudes, and authoritarianism.

We are sensitive to concerns about the use of mediation analysis and the difficulties of making causal claims based solely on this method. In particular, Green, Bullock, and Ha (Bullock & Ha, 2011; Green, Ha, & Bullock, 2010) argue that mediation analysis estimates (particularly those obtained using the Baron-Kenny [1986] method) using nonexperimental data are inherently biased by an inability to include or even conceive of all potential mediators. Recognizing this, we attempt to assuage concerns in a few ways. First, we estimate a multiple mediation model instead of individual mediation models, attempting to reduce bias introduced by excluded mediators. Second, because there are certainly excluded mediators that correlate with our mediators (party identification, anti-Black antipathy, and authoritarianism), we caution readers that our estimates of indirect effects may be biased by the exclusion of these additional mediators. Finally, we stress that we are not attempting to make any type of causal claims with this research. Instead, we urge readers to understand our results as describing the patterns of correlation between personality, policy positions, and our included mediators.

That said, we believe our results offer important insights into the pathways by which personality and group-based policy positions are related. Although sympathetic to their concerns, we believe the proposed solutions offered by Bullock and Ha (2011), to either manipulate mediators and treatments or use manipulated instruments for these variables, are frustratingly intractable for the study of personality, stereotyping, and partisanship. Although some have shown the ability to manipulate partisanship (Gerber, Huber, & Washington, 2010), these manipulations are unique to certain malleable subgroups. Furthermore, the ability to ethically manipulate personality and authoritarianism break down quickly when we consider that genetic influences account for roughly 50% of personality variance (McCrae & Costa, 2003) and 44% of traditional moral values (Ludeke, Johnson, & Bouchard, 2013). Recognizing the biases and limitations of this approach, we believe our results still offer important insights for personality and politics.

Table 4 displays the results from our mediation analysis of the five group-centric policy positions.⁶ We utilize a multiple mediation approach to disentangle the effect of personality on policy positions directly and indirectly through partisanship, stereotyping, and authoritarianism. Beginning with the direct effect of personality on policy attitudes (the bottom of four sections of Table 4), we see little evidence of direct effects except for Conscientiousness, which continues to exhibit a strong correlation with conservative policy positions. The only other significant effects emerge in the model of support for capital punishment, where Extraversion predicts opposition and Agreeableness predicts support. Aside from these cases, personality holds little direct predictive value for group-centric policies.

Table 4.

Stereotyping as Mediator of Personality Effects on Policy Attitudes.

	Welfare	Affordable Care Act	Affirmative action (work)	Affirmative action (university)	Capital punishment
Dependent Variable.: Party identification
Openness to Experience	−1.56*** (0.23)	−1.55*** (0.23)	−1.58*** (0.23)	−1.58*** (0.23)	−1.54*** (0.23)
Conscientiousness	0.95*** (0.22)	0.90*** (0.22)	0.94*** (0.22)	0.94*** (0.22)	0.96*** (0.22)
Extraversion	0.49** (0.18)	0.49** (0.18)	0.47* (0.18)	0.49** (0.18)	0.48** (0.19)
Agreeableness	−0.50* (0.21)	−0.43* (0.21)	−0.39 (0.21)	−0.48* (0.21)	−0.46* (0.21)
Neuroticism	−0.49* (0.20)	−0.51** (0.19)	−0.48* (0.19)	−0.53** (0.19)	−0.52** (0.20)
Dependent Variable.: Stereotyping
Party identification	0.01*** (0.00)	0.01*** (0.00)	0.01*** (0.00)	0.01*** (0.00)	0.01*** (0.00)
Openness to Experience	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)
Conscientiousness	0.00 (0.02)	−0.00 (0.02)	−0.00 (0.02)	−0.00 (0.02)	0.00 (0.02)
Extraversion	−0.03* (0.02)	−0.04* (0.02)	−0.03 (0.02)	−0.03 (0.02)	−0.04* (0.02)
Agreeableness	−0.12*** (0.02)	−0.13*** (0.02)	−0.12*** (0.02)	−0.13*** (0.02)	−0.12*** (0.02)
Neuroticism	0.05* (0.02)	0.05* (0.02)	0.05* (0.02)	0.04* (0.02)	0.05* (0.02)
Dependent Variable.: Authoritarianism
Party identification	0.02*** (0.00)	0.02*** (0.00)	0.02*** (0.00)	0.02*** (0.00)	0.02*** (0.00)
Openness to Experience	−0.15*** (0.03)	−0.15*** (0.03)	−0.14*** (0.03)	−0.15*** (0.03)	−0.15*** (0.03)
Conscientiousness	0.15*** (0.03)	0.15*** (0.03)	0.15*** (0.03)	0.15*** (0.03)	0.15*** (0.03)
Extraversion	0.07** (0.03)	0.07* (0.03)	0.07** (0.03)	0.07** (0.03)	0.07** (0.03)
Agreeableness	0.06 (0.03)	0.06 (0.03)	0.05 (0.03)	0.06 (0.03)	0.05 (0.03)
Neuroticism	0.07** (0.03)	0.08** (0.03)	0.07** (0.03)	0.08** (0.03)	0.07* (0.03)
Dependent Variable.: Policy attitude
Party identification	0.04*** (0.00)	0.10*** (0.00)	0.04*** (0.00)	0.04*** (0.00)	0.03*** (0.00)
African American stereotyping	0.15*** (0.02)	0.07** (0.03)	0.21*** (0.02)	0.18*** (0.02)	0.12*** (0.03)
Authoritarianism	0.04** (0.01)	0.07*** (0.02)	0.00 (0.02)	−0.00 (0.02)	0.22*** (0.02)
Openness to Experience	−0.02 (0.03)	−0.01 (0.03)	−0.02 (0.03)	−0.04 (0.03)	−0.05 (0.04)
Conscientiousness	0.11*** (0.03)	0.06* (0.03)	0.06* (0.03)	0.09** (0.03)	0.18*** (0.04)
Extraversion	0.03 (0.02)	0.01 (0.03)	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.01 (0.03)	0.10** (0.03)
Agreeableness	−0.03 (0.03)	−0.04 (0.03)	0.01 (0.03)	−0.02 (0.03)	−0.09* (0.04)
Neuroticism	−0.04 (0.02)	0.01 (0.03)	0.00 (0.03)	−0.01 (0.03)	−0.00 (0.03)
n	5,118	5,111	5,116	5,101	5,047

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

This does not imply, however, that personality does not influence attitudes toward these policies. Instead, it appears that the primary influence of personality is through either party identification or group-centric attitudes. To assess the full effect of personality, we need to calculate the indirect effect of personality through party identification, African American stereotyping, and authoritarianism. We do this by constructing the nonlinear product term of the effect of personality on the mediating variable and the effect of the mediating variable on the dependent variable of interest. We can also calculate the total indirect effect by summing these nonlinear terms. Table 5 presents the indirect effects of personality through each mediating variable.⁷

Table 5.

Indirect Effects of Personality Through Partisanship, Group Stereotypes, and Authoritarianism.

	Welfare	Affordable Care Act	Affirmative Action (work)	Affirmative Action (university)	Capital punishment
Party identification
Openness to Experience	−0.06*** (0.01)	−0.16*** (0.02)	−0.06*** (0.01)	−0.06*** (0.01)	−0.04*** (0.01)
Conscientiousness	0.04*** (0.01)	0.09*** (0.02)	0.04*** (0.01)	0.04*** (0.01)	0.03*** (0.01)
Extraversion	0.02** (0.01)	0.05** (0.02)	0.02* (0.01)	0.02** (0.01)	0.01* (0.01)
Agreeableness	−0.02* (0.01)	−0.04* (0.02)	−0.01 (0.01)	−0.02* (0.01)	−0.01* (0.01)
Neuroticism	−0.02* (0.01)	−0.05** (0.02)	−0.02* (0.01)	−0.02** (0.01)	−0.01* (0.01)
Stereotyping
Openness to Experience	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)
Conscientiousness	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.01)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)
Extraversion	−0.01 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.01 (0.00)	−0.01 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)
Agreeableness	−0.02*** (0.00)	−0.01* (0.00)	−0.03*** (0.01)	−0.02*** (0.01)	−0.01** (0.00)
Neuroticism	0.01* (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	0.01* (0.00)	0.01* (0.00)	0.01* (0.00)
Authoritarianism
Openness to Experience	−0.01* (0.00)	−0.01** (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	−0.03*** (0.01)
Conscientiousness	0.01* (0.00)	0.01** (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.03*** (0.01)
Extraversion	0.00 (0.00)	0.00* (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.02** (0.01)
Agreeableness	0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.01 (0.01)
Neuroticism	0.00 (0.00)	0.01* (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)	−0.00 (0.00)	0.02* (0.01)
Total indirect
Openness to Experience	−0.07*** (0.01)	−0.17*** (0.02)	−0.06*** (0.01)	−0.06*** (0.01)	−0.08*** (0.01)
Conscientiousness	0.04*** (0.01)	0.11*** (0.02)	0.04*** (0.01)	0.04*** (0.01)	0.06*** (0.01)
Extraversion	0.02* (0.01)	0.05** (0.02)	0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)	0.02** (0.01)
Agreeableness	−0.04*** (0.01)	−0.05* (0.02)	−0.04*** (0.01)	−0.04*** (0.01)	−0.02 (0.01)
Neuroticism	−0.01 (0.01)	−0.04* (0.02)	−0.01 (0.01)	−0.01 (0.01)	0.01 (0.01)

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

First, as expected, in every case, personality has an indirect effect on policy positions through party identification, with the exception of Agreeableness on Affirmative Action in the workplace attitudes. In line with prior research, Openness to Experience is indirectly associated with liberal policy positions through identification as a Democrat, whereas Conscientiousness is associated with conservative policy positions through identification as a Republican. These results confirm prior expectations about the connections of these two traits through political predispositions. As noted, we do not discount the importance of partisanship in driving connections between Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and policy positions. These results merely confirm past findings and demonstrate the importance of personality to partisanship link for subsequent policy positions.

Of more interest are the effects for stereotyping and authoritarianism. Interestingly, neither Openness to Experience nor Conscientiousness exerts any influence on policy positions through stereotyping. Because previous analyses showed little relationship between these personality traits and stereotyping of African Americans, the lack of an indirect influence is not surprising. Thus, it appears that the prejudiced personality as it relates to anti-Black affect may not hold significant theoretical weight.⁸

The most interesting pattern of results emerges for the domain of Neuroticism. In line with past work, Neuroticism was associated with Democratic identification and this identification, in turn, mediated the effect of Neuroticism to produce more liberal policy positions. Interestingly, neuroticism was also correlated with greater endorsement of out-group stereotypes (in four of the five models) and authoritarianism (in two of the five models), meaning that the effect of Neuroticism was mediated through these group-centric variables to produce more conservative policy positions. Thus, although Neuroticism exerts a liberalizing effect on group-centric policy positions through partisanship, it exerts the opposite effect through stereotypes of African Americans and authoritarianism. These results suggest that the inconsistencies with findings relating to Neuroticism can be traced to competing beliefs about partisanship and group centrism in the minds of voters. This is underscored by the total indirect effect for Neuroticism, which is statistically indistinguishable from zero in four of the five models. This results not from a lack of relationship between the trait and policy positions, but from a complicated interplay between Neuroticism, symbolic partisanship, and operational group-based stereotyping. Clearly, more work is needed to unpack the complexities of this relationship, work that is unfortunately beyond the scope of this research.

Turning to the results for authoritarianism, we see clear patterns of indirect personality effects of support for welfare spending, the Affordable Care Act, and capital punishment, with no evidence of indirect effects on Affirmative Action. Once again, as expected, Openness to Experience, working through authoritarianism, produces more liberal policy positions. In contrast, Conscientiousness is associated with higher levels of authoritarianism and these beliefs, in turn, influence policy conservatism independent of stereotyping and partisanship. Taken together, the mediation results demonstrate that when we seek to understand the influence of Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness (as well as the other three traits), we would be wise to consider the multiple pathways through which these traits influence policy positions. It is not enough simply to attribute the liberalizing effects of Openness to Experience (and the conservative path associated with Conscientiousness) to beliefs and preferences for the status quo. We must also consider the content of the policy positions. When those positions concern group affect, the effect of both Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness is enhanced through their association with authoritarianism.

Conclusion

Personality is an important part of who we are and it shapes the way we see the world. Yet, despite the prominent role that politics plays in the lives of many, the breadth of personality’s influence has only recently begun to be examined with any regularity. A primary goal of this article is to continue this theoretical discussion. Findings from a nationally representative survey not only corroborates findings from previous research in psychology, that personality traits (as measured by using the Big Five) affect prejudicial orientations and stereotypes of specific social groups, but also that the effect of personality on group-centric policy positions is both direct (in some cases) and indirect through partisanship, stereotyping, and authoritarianism.

These findings are not without caveats. The proper level to measure personality in the Big Five is an open question in political behavior. The analyses here rely on brief measures of the Big Five, whereas other work suggests that refining the measure of the Big Five by using facets and aspects might shed greater light on the true relationship of personality to other sociopolitical orientations. Clearly, more research needs to done to evaluate whether the Big Five traits should be the reference point for explaining political behavior or whether some aspects of political behavior are better analyzed at the level of facets.

In addition, we may also be mismeasuring the relationship between personality and prejudicial orientations. In particular, the explicit measurement of social stereotypes and other orientations may mute individuals’ true underlying beliefs, as they seek to avoid violating the social norm against explicit prejudicial behavior. A solution to this would be a replication of the above findings capturing stereotypes and related beliefs implicitly, rather than explicitly, by the use of response latency–based items such as the Implicit Association Test or the Affect Misattribution Procedure (see Greenwald et al., 1998; Payne et al., 2005).

These findings provide valuable insight into the complex ways that personality influences beliefs about the world and policies that affect different groups in society. In some cases (namely, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness), the bulk of the influence of personality on policy positions is through partisanship. Yet, when these policy positions concern important societal groups, personality traits are brought to bear through group-centric beliefs (namely, authoritarianism) as well. In addition, with the exception of Conscientiousness, most of the domains of personality do not influence group-centric policy positions directly. Instead, through party identification, stereotyping, or authoritarianism, they alter positions indirectly.⁹

These results underscore the importance of understanding the multiple paths by which personality can influence policy positions. In this exploration, we examined group-centric attitudes, showing that the influence of Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience on policy positions was strengthened by the association with authoritarianism. This is not, however, the only potential pathway for personality to influence policies. For example, Mondak (2010) found that both Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness are correlated with internal political efficacy. As we continue to explore the potential influence of personality on political behavior, scholars would be wise to consider whether the association with efficacy (for example) increases the influence of personality traits on behaviors reliant on internal efficacy.

Further research would do well to delve deeper into how personality operates as an unmoved mover in prejudicial thinking and to what extent personality influence policy positions without explicit social group connotations such as those examined here. In addition, scholars should examine whether personality connections to stereotyping alters responses to racial priming. Does being high in Openness to Experience serve to moderate responsiveness to subtle stereotype primes, diminishing the need to self-monitor to avoid prejudice? Does being high in Conscientiousness make one more susceptible?

Taken as a whole, this article advances our understanding of the role personality plays in shaping our political thinking and action. Further research is needed to replicate and extend these findings to add robustness to new measures and analysis. We need to focus on both the theoretical and methodological fronts, if we endeavor to fully uncover the role of personality in political behavior. This article begins this exploration, demonstrating the often complex and subtle ways that personality shapes political attitudes through party identification and social group stereotyping.

Footnotes

Appendix

In the text of the article, we demonstrate that personality influences group-based policy attitudes through partisanship as well as stereotyping behavior and authoritarianism. However, these effects could result from a true association of personality through these group stereotyping behaviors or from a spurious correlation with an excluded variable or a political group association. To test for this, we present a replication of our results from Table 5 with four non-group-based issues (expansion of nuclear power, gun control, federal spending to protect the environment, and federal spending on child care) as well as two additional group-centric policies that are not based on racial groups (gay marriage and immigration). All responses are scaled to run from zero to one, with zero reflecting the most conservative answer and one representing the most liberal answer. If our theory is correct, party identification should continue to mediate the effects of personality on these issues, but authoritarianism should only mediate the effect of personality for gay marriage and immigration and stereotyping should play a more limited role, as the group-based policies do not deal explicitly with race.

As Table A1 shows, our theory is largely supported by these results. Party identification continues to mediate the influence of personality on issue positions. Of the 30 individual indirect effects, 29 achieve statistical significance in the direction expected from previous research. Therefore, partisanship continues as an important mediator of personality effects on issue positions.

Interestingly, the effect of Agreeableness through anti-Black stereotyping holds for three of the four non-group-based policies (as well as gay marriage), which runs counter to our expectations. This suggests that the mediation of Agreeableness through stereotyping produces more liberal policy positions across the policy spectrum, not just with group-based policies. More investigation is needed to understand this relationship. However, the mediation of the effects of Neuroticism through stereotyping (found in Table 5) do not replicate with these new results, which does accord well with our expectations.

Turning finally to the results for authoritarianism, we see some of the strongest evidence in support of our group-based policy theory. Of the 20 indirect effects showing the mediation of personality through authoritarianism on non-group-based policies, 18 fail to achieve statistical significance. In addition, the size of the indirect effects is substantively smaller than the effects observed for the two additional group-based policies.

Looking at those policies, we see the expected effect, with Openness to Experience leading to more liberal policy positions on gay marriage and immigration, mediated through authoritarianism. In addition, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism are associated with more conservative policy positions through authoritarianism. These results are in line with the results reported in Table 5.

Taken together, we believe this represents strong evidence that the effects of the Big Five personality traits through group-based attitudes on stereotyping and authoritarianism is largely confined to policy positions that are explicitly or implicitly associated with societal groups. When policies are associated with party identification or ideological positions without a group-based aspect (as we believe nuclear power, gun control, environmental spending, and child care spending are), the explanatory weight of personality is carried almost exclusively through partisanship and not stereotyping or authoritarianism.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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

Funding

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

Supplemental Material

Supplementary material is available for this article online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Philip G. Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Beloit College. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota. His research examines gender and racial identities, personality traits, and political communication. His work has previously appeared in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Political Behavior, and Political Research Quarterly.

Carl L. Palmer is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University. He received his PhD from the University of California, Davis, and his work focuses on how factors such as social identity and stereotypes affect how citizens perceive the political and social work. His research has previously appeared in the American Politics Research, Foreign Policy Analysis, the Journal of Politics, and Politics, Groups, and Identities.

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