Personality traits linked to political orientation

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886918301466

The main points:

* Gender and Openness are the most important factors

* Women who are better educated, less religious and of higher social class are more Left-Wing

* Open and Agreeable people are more Left-Wing

* Agreeable and Neurotic (emotional) people of high social class are more Left-Wing

* Neurotic (emotional) people of low social class are more Right-Wing

* Introverted and Conscientious people are more Right-Wing.


Abstract
This study examined the incremental validity of the Big-Five personality traits over primarily demographic factors in predicting Left-Right political orientation (PO) in a large British adult sample. Gender and trait Openness was most strongly correlated with PO. The regression indicated that females who were better educated, less religious and of higher social class were more Left-Wing. Personality traits doubled the variance accounted for (4% to 9%) indicating that Open, more Agreeable people were more Left-Wing and Introverted, more Conscientious people more Right-Wing. Agreeableness and Neuroticism showed an interaction with social class, such that for high social class, Left-Wing orientation increased with Agreeableness (but not for low social class); and for high social class, Left-Wing orientation increased with Neuroticism, whilst for low social class, Right-Wing orientation increased with Neuroticism.

A twist related to this: https://www.psypost.org/2018/05/political-beliefs-likely-rooted-personality-traits-among-see-politics-means-self-expression-51315 Quoting:

. . . “Psychologists and political scientists have argued more and more in recent years that people with different personality traits may be attracted to different political positions,” said the corresponding author of the study, Christopher M. Federico of University of Minnesota.

. . . “So, we thought it might be interesting to see whether people who see their political beliefs as important to their sense of who they are were more likely to ‘choose’ their political beliefs on the basis of personal traits. Individuals who see their political beliefs as more important to their sense of self should hold political beliefs that better reflect aspects of the self — like personality traits.”

. . . “We know from a lot of previous research that individuals who are high in need for closure — in other words, people who want to feel more certain about things — are more likely to have conservative beliefs,” Federico told PsyPost.

“What we show in our study is that this relationship is found mainly among people who see their political beliefs as important to their sense of who they are. Among people who see their political beliefs as important to their identity, need for closure predicts conservatism.”

In other words, the link between need for closure and conservatism mostly existed among those who agreed with statements such as “My political attitudes and beliefs are an important reflection of who I am” and “In general, my political attitudes and beliefs are an important part of my self-image.”

“However, among those who do not see their political beliefs as important to their identity, political beliefs do not seem to reflect personality traits like the need for closure much,” Federico noted.

https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.16030051# Quoting:

Abstract
Differences in political ideology are a major source of human disagreement and conflict. There is increasing evidence that neurobiological mechanisms mediate individual differences in political ideology through effects on a conservative-liberal axis. This review summarizes personality, evolutionary and genetic, cognitive, neuroimaging, and neurological studies of conservatism-liberalism and discusses how they might affect political ideology. What emerges from this highly variable literature is evidence for a normal right-sided “conservative-complex” involving structures sensitive to negativity bias, threat, disgust, and avoidance. This conservative-complex may be damaged with brain disease, sometimes leading to a pathological “liberal shift” or a reduced tendency to conservatism in political ideology. Although not deterministic, these findings recommend further research on politics and the brain.

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Discussion
The literature on political ideology indicates a neurobiological circuitry for mediating the conservative-liberal dimension of political ideology. This literature, although variable and often flawed, suggests the existence of a “conservative complex” in the right anterior brain (see Figure 1). Recognizing that there is a neurobiological basis for conservatism-liberalism does not mean that life experiences and social learning are not major determinants, or that the neurobiological underpinnings determine, rather than reflect, conservative versus liberal attitudes. Nevertheless, neurologists and psychiatrists have recognized patients with right frontotemporal brain disorders resulting in changes in conservative-liberal behavior with consequences for political ideology.

There is also plenty of evidence that suggest exercise styles influence political persuasion. Those who focus on cardio, runners and bicyclers, tend to be liberals. Those who focus on weight training tend to be conservative.

I suppose the psychodynamic explanation would be that conservatives do weights to build strength and give themselves greater confidence about self-defence - the cautious mind-set. I'm not sure why liberals would prefer fitness exercises. Actually, I can't think why anyone would want to do boring fitness routines when they could do some kind of sport instead. But maybe some people just don't enjoy competing and would rather go for a run or something.

I think this is very enlightening!

https://onbeing.org/programs/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-of-self-righteousness-oct2017/  Selected quotes:

KT (hostess): The surprising psychology behind morality is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research. He explains “liberal” and “conservative” not narrowly or necessarily as political affiliations, but as personality types — ways of moving through the world. His self-described “conservative-hating, religion-hating, secular liberal instincts” have been challenged by his own studies.

JH: Psychologically, what we find empirically is that people who identify as conservative tend to like order and predictability, whereas people who identify as liberal, they like variety and diversity. I have one study where we have dots moving around on a screen. Conservatives like the images where the dots are moving around more in lockstep with each other. Liberals like it when it’s all chaotic and random.

KT: Jonathan Haidt does describe five primary moral foundations that are held across individuals and cultures. People who are liberal and conservative, he says, value two of these in common, compassion and fairness. But conservatives simultaneously juggle three other moral values — of loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

KT: . . . you say very interesting things, also, about how it is harder for liberals to understand conservatives, or that liberals need to try harder to understand conservatives than conservatives would have to try to understand liberals.

JH: Okay . . . one of my main areas of research — my colleagues and I call it moral foundations theory — is about these different — almost like taste buds of the moral sense. So everybody values compassion and fairness, whether you’re liberal or conservative — everybody. But then there are these three others: loyalty v. betrayal, authority v. subversion, and sanctity v. degradation. And what we find is that conservatives give relatively high marks to all five of those. They value all of those, whereas liberals reject those last three — “That’s, like, the foundations of racism and exclusiveness.” And “No,” they — “group loyalty? That’s terrible.” In other words, liberals build their moral matrix, their moral world, on these two foundations, primarily.

And in one study that I did with my former graduate student, Jesse Graham, we asked liberals and conservatives to fill out our main surveys, pretending to be the other, and also as themselves, for different people. What we found is that conservatives and moderates were very accurate at filling it out as though they were liberals. But liberals were not accurate filling it out as though they were conservatives, because they just couldn’t get their mind into the idea that authority is somehow related to morality; they think it’s just oppression. So that’s one reason why there’s a difficulty, an asymmetric difficulty.

The other reason is that the media tends to be liberal, as the academic world is, and Hollywood. So you cannot grow up in this country without being exposed to lots and lots of liberal ideas. But it wasn’t until I was about 40 that I happened to pull a book off a shelf that said “conservatism” on it, that I was ever exposed to conservative ideas. And I’m well educated. And I had never encountered conservative ideas. So, there’s a real asymmetry in access to the other side’s ideas.

JH: But in doing this research and coming to see that liberals and conservatives each have a piece of the puzzle — each are really perceptive about certain moral values, about the needs of what it takes to have a humane society, and if you let liberals run everything, they tend to burn up social capital, but conservatives tend to focus more on building up social structures that actually do allow us to flourish in some ways. You do need order. You do need some restrictions. You do need some boundaries.

KT: So how would you explain the fact that — this seeming contradiction that religion — that religions are carriers of morality and also that that those very same energies become most destructive?

JH: Well, if you think that morality is being nice and kind to people, well, then, yeah, boy, it sure looks like a paradox. But if you go with me that morality is these many things, and a lot of it is, “Are you a good group member, or are you pursuing your own interests?” — and those group interests often are about intergroup conflict — so if you think about religion as functioning to bind groups together, well then, it’s no paradox. A lot of that is nasty stuff.

I was a self-righteous, conservative-hating, religion-hating, secular liberal. And in doing this research over many years, and in forcing myself to watch FOX News as an anthropologist who just — “I’ve got to understand this stuff” — over time I realized, “Well, they’re not crazy. These ideas make sense. They see things I didn’t see.”

JH: Yeah, so first, let me be clear that while each side can’t see the flaws in its own matrix, there is a symmetry here, and left and right are similar in some ways. But one of the clearest differences between left and right, psychologically, is that the left is generally universalist, almost to a fault, and the right is parochial, often to a fault. And what I mean by parochial isn’t just “narrow-minded and dumb.” What I mean is — so we have a survey at yourmorals.org where we ask, “How much do you care about or think about or value people in your community, people in your country, people in the world at large?” And OK, so conservatives value people in their nation and in their community much more than people in the world at large. And you might say, OK, well, that’s parochial. But what do liberals do? Liberals on our survey actually say they value people in the world at large more than people in their own country, more than people in their community. So liberals are so universalist, they often don’t really pay much attention to their own groups. As my mother said about my grandfather, who was a labor organizer, “He loved humanity so much that he didn’t really have much time to care for his family.”

KT: Jonathan Haidt has written this: “To live virtuously as individuals and societies, we must understand how our minds are built. We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness. We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own.”

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He’s the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Here you can sign up for various personality tests: https://www.yourmorals.org/

I'll get around to it.

Out of curiosity, give a mark /10 for each of the five primary morals according to how important they are to you and then we'll compare with each other:

Loyalty  
Sanctity  
Fairness  
Authority  
Compassion

Neon Knight wrote:Out of curiosity, give a mark /10 for each of the five primary morals according to how important they are to you and then we'll compare with each other:

Loyalty  
Sanctity  
Fairness  
Authority  
Compassion

hrm.

Loyalty: 8/10
One of the reasons that it isn't as high as it should be, is because I don't believe in blind loyalty.
Sanctity: 8/10
some things should be respected even if you don't like them. but again, I don't like total sanctity
Fairness: 5/10
Life isn't fair.
Authority: 7/10
knowing who is in charge is a good thing. everyone knowing their place makes for a streamlined society. But, I don't like the idea of blindly following authority.
Compassion: 9/10

My self-ratings:

Loyalty 8
Sanctity 9
Fairness 10
Authority 7
Compassion 8

I'll wait for Sary before commenting.

It is difficult for me to be objective , but looking back on my life and track record....

Loyalty 4 , I can be selfish like that. If I feel that I have been wronged or hurt, I can quickly turn away and change horses mid stream. It is self preservation in my mind.

Sanctity 8 , I am not really sure what that means, but it sounds hopeful and good so I will give it a high mark.

Fairness 3 , one of life's biggest jokes!

Authority 5, a delicate balance.

Compassion 7, I am trying harder to raise this score.
It is easy to have compassion towards the innocents and animals, but it is much more difficult to have compassion towards evil, rotten people or sometimes people that are simply different than you.

Sary, you come across as a moderate conservative - with certain standards but not the "hang 'em high" type. Sanctity is defined as 'the state or quality of being holy, sacred, or saintly' / 'ultimate importance and inviolability'. If you combine high sanctity with strong authority then it produces something which can be pretty intense. Osric Pearl and me could be called sanctitarians, I think. But neither of us are very high on authority so we're not at the extreme. And having a reasonable level of compassion is very important of course.

Yes, moderate conservative seems a good overall representation of my political orientation.
It sounds kind of boring.
Of course most of my friends, family and coworkers are lefties, so compared to them, I am a far right.
I don't dare talk politics at work. I have gotten lectured before, looked down on by doctors.

A university hospital sitting up on a hill.like an ivory tower of delicate snow flakes. I pretend that I am liberal

Interesting that you both gave yourselves high scores in most of the morals.
And NK a 10 for fairness, where as OP and I gave that one a low one.
Maybe I don't understand the word...
What kind of fairness do you mean, social justice, economic, legal, blonde hair?
Morals are very abstract, not the same for everybody.

Sary wrote:Interesting that you both gave yourselves high scores in most of the morals.
And NK a 10 for fairness, where as OP and I gave that one a low one.
Maybe I don't understand the word...
What kind of fairness do you mean, social justice, economic, legal, blonde hair?
Morals are very abstract, not the same for everybody.

Blonde hair  

I mean everyone having as equal a chance as possible, playing by the agreed rules and keeping one's word. But that can also mean being ruthless with those who do not play fairly. I found this nice true story:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/792473/wwi-germany-solier-british-fighter-pilot-chivalry-fair-play  Quoting:

Gerd Berendonck was just 10 when he heard a story that would change his life for ever. His father, the young schoolboy learned, only survived the First World War through an astonishing act of “British fair play”. The lesson would travel with him through his experiences as a PoW of the British during the Second World War to his career as one of Germany’s foremost diplomats.

In the autumn of 1916 Gerd’s father Gerhard, a photographer on a German reconnaissance biplane, was taking pictures of British troops in the Somme offensive when he was spotted by a Royal Flying Corps plane. Knowing his DFW aircraft would be hopelessly out-powered by the British arrival he tapped on the pilot’s shoulder indicating they should make for home quickly.

The English ace had others ideas, however, and for a few long seconds the two biplanes embarked on a bitter aerial dogfight, rounds rattling at a rate of 700 per minute.  Then Berendonck’s rear-facing machine gun jammed. Now 93, Gerd recalls the day in 1934 when his father told him what happened next.

“My father’s plane could do 10 knots less than the British aircraft so it was only a matter of time before it circled and returned. But his machine gun had jammed. He tried and tried but could not make it work. He watched the British aircraft closing in and stood up to his full height in the rear cockpit, putting his hands in his flying suit. He fully expected the fighter to open fire, to die in the next few moments, and faced his fate.

Instead of opening fire the British pilot approached and gesticulated, asking why my father wasn’t firing. My father shrugged his shoulders and made a hand signal to indicate his machine gun was kaput. And with that the British fighter pilot laughed, waved and flew away. My father was left waving back, in sheer disbelief and with immense relief.”

His voice breaking with emotion Gerd continues: “I remember that we were sitting together in our garden. He had never spoken to me before about the war. I don’t know why he decided to tell me that story on that day, 18 years after the event. But I listened with fascination. I was mesmerised by every detail. Then my father turned to me and said slowly, ‘This is what is called British fair play. They will not kill someone who cannot defend himself’. I realised at that moment my father could have been killed, his aircraft shot down in flames.”

I found a good test for the political morals: https://www.idrlabs.com/morality/6/test.php



Care - 92%
Fairness - 83%
Loyalty - 58%
Authority - 75%
Purity - 72%
Liberty - 67%

Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.