Lecturer: Dr. Kingsley Nyarko , Department of Psychology Contact - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

College of Education School of Continuing and Distance Education

2014/2015 – 2016/2017

Lecturer: Dr. Kingsley Nyarko, Department of Psychology Contact Information: knyarko@ug.edu.gh

Session Overview

At the end of the session, the student will be able to

• Explain how personality influences the decisions of

politicians and voters.

• Analyze some current and recent studies on

personality of politicians and voters.

• Evaluate the role of values and traits in ideological
• rientation.

Slide 2

Session Outline

The key topics to be covered in the session are as follows:

• Introduction/Background.
• The Role of Traits and Values in Ideological Orientations.
• Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and

Voters.

Slide 3

Reading List

• Caprara, G., & Vecchione, M. (2009). Personality and

Politics, In P. J. Corr & G. Mathews (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology, pp. 589-607. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Slide 4

INTRODUCTION

Topic One

Slide 5

Introduction

• Personality assumes an increasingly central role in the

analysis of political behavior as traits and values are found to be more influential than traditional socio- demographic characteristics such as gender, age, educational level, occupation, and income in explaining ideological orientation and political preferences.

• Eventually, personality appears to play a pivotal role

with regard to both the distinctive features of democratic systems, namely the freedom of voice allowed to citizens by voting and choosing the representatives that most suit their opinions and interests

Slide 6

Introduction

• In this section we look at the role of traits and values

in ideological orientations, recent and current research on personality of politicians and voters, and how political psychology can be used to foster national development.

Slide 7

Sample Questions

• 1. How does personality influence the actions and

behaviours of politicians?

• 2. Discuss the role of values and traits in ideological
• rientation.

Slide 8

THE ROLE OF TRAITS AND VALUES IN IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATIONS

Topic Two

Slide 9

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• Traits and values are embedded in different

intellectual traditions and inform us about different things that pertain to personality

• functioning. According to McCrae and Costa (1990,

p.23), traits are “dimensions of individual differences in tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions.” Values,

• n the other hand are cognitive representation of

desirable, abstract, trans-situational goals that serve as guiding principles in people’s lives (Schwartz, 1992).

Slide 10

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• Whereas traits are enduring dispositions; values are

enduring goals. Traits describe what people are like; values refer to what people consider important. Scholars, both earlier and contemporary have indicated the effect that traits may have on political

• rientation (Block & Block, 2006; Eysenck 1954; Jost

2006) and to the central role of values in politics as major organizers of political evaluations (Feldman, 2003; Knutsen 1995; Mitchell, Tetlock, Mellers & Ordonez, 1993).

Slide 11

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• McCrae (1996) an advocate of the Big Five Personality trait,

indicated that openness to experience is the personality trait that mostly differentiates liberal and conservative in the political arena.

• According to his conceptualization, this personality dimension

is characterized mainly by fantasy, love for aesthetics,

• penness to feelings and to actions, tolerance for ideas and

values.

• He indicated that “within Western societies, open individuals

have an affinity for liberal, progressive, left-wing political views, whereas closed individuals prefer conservative, traditional, right-wing views” (McCrae 1996, p. 325).

Slide 12

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• In his review on the social consequences of

Openness, McCrae reports the results of several studies that show that political conservatism is in fact connected to psychological conservatism (McCrae 1996), with low sensation-seeking, behavioural rigidity, social conformity and conventionality in moral reasoning as major psychological correlates of socio-political conservatism.

Slide 13

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• However, there is no agreement as far as the other

Big Five dimensions are concerned, namely: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and

• neuroticism. McCrae (1996, p. 328-9) noted that, one

cannot “find systematic differences in neuroticism, extraversion, or conscientiousness among political groups.

Slide 14

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• The case is more complex with regard to

agreeableness that does affect political sentiments forming a factor….. called tender-mindedness.”

• In connection to extraversion, there is some evidence
• f a negative correlation between sensation-seeking,

an aspect of extraversion, and political conservativism (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski and Sulloway 2003a).

Slide 15

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• In their study, Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swam (2003)

discovered that conscientiousness was negatively related with liberalism, and positively related with conservatism, although with small correlations. The same trend was observed by Carney in the United State and Caprara in Italy: centre-right voters scored higher on conscientiousness than centre-left voters.

Slide 16

The Role of Traits and values in Ideological Orientations

• Finally, results regarding emotional stability seem to be

rather inconsistent. Only Gosling and colleagues (2003) found that the politically conservative are more emotionally stable than the politically liberal. Jost et al. (2003a) noted that to the extent that conservatives are more generally fearful than others, one might expect that they would also exhibit higher levels of Neuroticism.

• However, they did not find evidence of this in their meta-

analysis, nor did a similar tendency emerge in the studies conducted in Italy. In the end, emotional stability appears to be a personality dimension largely independent from the political domain.

Slide 17

RECENT AND CURRENT RESEARCH ON PERSONALITY OF POLITICIANS AND VOTERS

Topic Three

Slide 18

Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and Voters

• After the cognitive revolution that occurred in the late

1960s, studies of political reasoning were oriented towards the various or diverse strategies that people use to select and organize political information, manage complexity, and to make reasonable choices (Lau 2003; Lau & Sears 1986; Lodge & McGraw 1995; Simon, 1995).

• One of the research orientations examined the path

taken by people to handle political issues and the interrelated patterns of affect and cognition that lead to stable individual characteristics such as integrative complexity.

Slide 19

Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and Voters

• This research orientation received enormous

consideration as a result of its focus on the examination

• f the personalities of members of political elites and of

the general public by looking at two different dimensions that combine in political reasoning—differentiation and

• integration. Differentiation means the variety of aspects
• f an issue or decision that an individual takes into

account when making judgments, whereas integration connotes the connections that are perceived and formed among various ideas and elements of judgments (Tetlock 1983, 1984).

Slide 20

Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and Voters

• Current studies continue to point to individual differences in

complexity and sophistication as critical in political reasoning and choice (Krosnick, 1990; Luskin, 1990; Pierce, 1993; Suedfeld & Tetlock, 2001).

• In general, studies of politicians have focused mostly on

leaders’ decisions, interpersonal styles, motives and worldviews, and have primarily relied on indirect means for assessing personality at a distance, such as content analysis of narratives or archival material, as well as on biographies or expert evaluation of politicians’ personality (Barber, 1985; Etheredge, 1978; George & George, 1998; Prost, 2003; Rubenzer, Faschingbauer & Ones, 2000).

Slide 21

Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and Voters

• With regard to studies on voters’ personality, the

emphasis has mostly been on traits, values, social attitudes and cognitive styles’ co-variation with ideologies self-placement or voting and has primarily relied on self-report methods (Fraley, 2007; Carney, Jost, Gosling & Potter, 2008; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, 2003a; McCrae, 1996; Rentfrow, Jost, Gosling & Potter, 2006).

Slide 22

Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and Voters

• It should be noted that only few individual

differences in attitudes such as dogmatism, right- wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1996, 1998), motives (Winter 1987, 1992), and information- processing (Suedfeld & Tetlock 2001) have been analyzed in both voters and politicians and very limited studies have pursued a comprehensive assessment of personality traits which allows for comparison among politicians and voters within and between opposite coalitions (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Consiglio et al., 2003; Constantini & Craik, 1980).

Slide 23

Recent and Current Research on Personality of Politicians and Voters

• However, in reality, nomothetic studies focusing on

multiple aspect of psychological functioning relying

• n direct methods of assessments such as self-report

from a large sample of voters and politicians are crucial for uncovering new insight into the relationships between personality and ideological

• rientation.

Slide 24

References

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