(How) Do Personality Traits Relate to Political Engagement?

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Brigitte Huber; her interest is in the motivations for engaging in politics. Such participation might be explained by demographics, political knowledge, news use and other factors, but also by inherent personality traits.

Of the commonly recognised ‘big five’ personality traits, extraversion might make the participation in interactive events such as demonstrations more likely, while voting may be less important to them; agreeableness might make people avoid political conflicts, but they may still be regular voters; conscientiousness is likely to mean that people are more likely to vote, but they may be discouraged from participating in the cut and thrust of political work; emotional stability might encourage political participation, but conversely instability might also lead people to engage in political groups as it helps them find social connections and support; and openness to new experiences may attract people to politics as it provides them with an opportunity to encounter new people and ideas.

But such effects of personality traits may not always be direct; they may also be mediated by (especially social) media use. What are the possible indirect effects here? News use may be an important antecedent of political participation, and extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness may all lead to greater social media use. The present project tested such aspects as part of a 19-country study on digital influence; it measured offline political participation, online political participation, and political engagement through voting, as well as social media news use.

This showed that extraversion, agreeableness, and openness were strong predictors of political participation: extraversion led to political participation online and offline, but is negatively related to voting; agreeable persons are less likely to participate politically, but more likely to vote; and openness has a similar pattern as agreeableness.

Social media use positively mediates the relationship between extraversion and political participation, and negatively affects that with voting engagement. Interestingly, extraversion and agreeableness also matter more in countries with low GDP. This may have something to do with cultural attitudes in richer and poorer countries, and individualistic or collective social contexts may also affect such patterns.