Politics involves systems of external rules and implicit principles
of power management for achieving leader or party goals, ideally for
the communal good. Personality involves systems of distinctive self-regulatory
mechanisms and struc- tures for guiding cognitive, affective, and
motivational processes toward achieving individual and collective
goals, while preserving a sense of personal identity (Bandura, 1997;
Caprara, 1996; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). How these societal and
individual systems might be related has long been a source of speculation
and Political Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1999 serious concern
for philosophers, political scientists, psychologists, and ordinary
citizens. Although it is easy to think of these entities as existing
in totally different realms, operating at different levels and with
different operational structures, there are vital commonalities that
suggest a more dynamic interaction between politics and personality.
Political parties advocate beliefs and values that legitimate the
socioeconomic conditions in which people live, and which they aspire
to achieve. Thus, they can exert enormous influence on the quality
of the daily life of individual citizens, even shaping basic perspectives
of options, goals, attitudes, and values. However, political parties
are not simply sociological entities, but rather are creations of,
and collections of, people who themselves operate as individual and
social entities. Citizens bring to the political arena needs and aspirations
for personal and social well-being that determine their choice of
political party, and, in turn, may influence the agendas and behavior
of politicians. In democracies, both politicians and the people they
serve set conditions and constraints on each other's aspirations.
Studying the relationships between personality and politics is complicated
by all the inherent difficulties in establishing broad person-behavior-situation
recip- rocal interactions. Nevertheless, it is important to clarify
the extent to which voters' personal dispositions (beliefs, goals,
habitual behavior patterns) and political agendas are mutually interdependent.
It becomes a matter of empirical research to determine what is general
and what is contextual in the relationship between the personalities
of individual voters and the ideological positions and agendas of
particular political parties. This task seemed easier in earlier times,
when the creative team of researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley, could develop a psychodynamically focused theory about how
the needs and values of those who were characterized as "authoritarian
personalities" meshed with their choice of extreme political identification
(Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). Despite
the theoretical and methodological limitations of that pioneering
research (Christie & Jahoda, 1954), it generated intellectual
enthusiasm about the ways in which personality constructs might be
related to, and enhance, our understanding of political behavior.
Research emerged from a host of theoretical perspectives that proposed
connections between political behavior and various individual difference
constructs from personality and social psychology, such as tender-mindedness
and tough-mindedness (Eysenck, 1954), conservatism (McClosky, 1958),
alienation (Seeman, 1959), conservatism/dogmatism (Rokeach, 1960),
anomy (Srole, 1965), and power motivation (Browning & Jacob, 1964;
Winter, 1973). This line of research seemed to hold much promise regarding
politics and personality inquiry (Greenstein & Lerner, 1969).
However, in the absence of a general theory of personality or consensual
agreement about its standardized assessment, research focused on multiple
indi- vidual constructs without being guided by an integrated conceptual
vision (see Brewster-Smith, 1968; Knutson, 1973). Focusing on the
operation of personality traits in isolation gave way to subsuming
their impact under the broader study of social attitudes and the power
of situational variables as influencing all social behavior, including
political action (Zimbardo, Ebbesen, & Maslach, 1977). The resurgence
of interest in personality and politics beginning in the late 1970s
focused on the analysis of political leadership (see Hermann, 1977,
1986; Simonton, 1990; Tetlock, 1983; Winter, 1987). A variety of individual
difference characteristics, such as cognitive style, motivation, intelligence,
and value orien- tation, were assessed using different methods and
were linked to a variety of political performances and criteria. It
is surprising to us that so little of this body of research investigated
relationships between personality and the political preferences of
citizens, as anticipated by Di Renzo (1974). We feel that the time
is now ripe to pursue the provocative links between patterns or profiles
of personality traits of citizen-voters and their particular political
behaviors. How do the public policies and promotional propaganda of
political parties, especially the rhetoric of political campaigning,
affect the kinds of individuals who will come to endorse or reject
them? How do the personality patterns of voters create matches or
mismatches with the "image management" of political candidates? These
are but a few of the questions raised by reflecting on the converging
or diverging paths on which politicians, political parties, and personalities
of voters may be plotted. A recently developed consensual standard
for assessing a limited, fundamental set of personality traits, the
Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM), offers a valuable tool to
aid such investigations. In addition, the availability of statistical
analysis techniques for determining power effects (as effect sizes)
of predicted personality-politics links, while controlling for the
many sociological and status variables that usually confound such
interpretations, helps contribute to enhancing our knowledge about
the relationships between personality and politics. After briefly
outlining the utility of the FFM for this type of investigation, we
discuss how the new political situation in Italy, as in many democracies
worldwide, poses a critical challenge for linking personality to political
party preference because of the rise of political coalitions that
coalesce around centrist positions instead of diverging around formerly
ideological extreme positions. The Five-Factor Model of Personality
In recent years, scholars seeking a consensual lexicon to describe
personality, in alliance with researchers aiming to identify the basic
components of personality structure, have developed the FFM as a common
framework for organizing personality descriptors and traits. Although
the explanatory value of the model is still under discussion, the
robustness of a host of findings across methods, popula- tions, and
researchers represents a unique and encouraging event in personality
psychology. The dimensions of Extroversion (or Surgency, Energy),
Agreeableness (or Friendliness), Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability
(or Neuroticism), and Open- ness to Experiences (or Intellect, Culture)
represent a point of convergence of the psycholexical and questionnaire
approaches to the study of personality. Advocates of the FFM argue
that it subsumes most of the traditional trait taxonomies and provides
a comprehensive and reasonably sufficient summary of major individual
differences (Digman, 1990; John, 1990; McCrae, 1989; Ostendorf &
Angleitner, 1992; Wiggins, 1996). The strength of the FFM derives
from its pragmatic value of representing a well-substantiated and
agreed-upon framework for describing personality (Caprara, Barbaranelli,
& Livi, 1994). Insofar as it provides a common language for research
and assessment in personality psychology, it provides a useful mapping
of individual differences. Furthermore, insofar as the FFM identifies
the main dimensions underlying the reports and ratings that people
make of their own and of others' personalities, it may better focus
investigations of the relationships between these dimensions and relevant
social outcomes. It is evident that the FFM does not provide a sufficiently
fine-grained description of personality because more than five dimensions
are needed to capture the multifaceted aspects of individuality and
the complex interactions among multiple combinations of traits that
give rise to the uniqueness of personalities. It also seems evident
that we cannot totally rely on latent dimensions extracted from large
populations of respondents to capture the dimensions that underlie
the constellations of beliefs and behaviors of single individuals.
However, the same factors that result from the aggregation of individual
difference data across multiple respon- dents may provide a valuable
compass to map onto a common reference framework the constellations
of beliefs and habitual behaviors within given populations. Doing
so aids the exploration of their influence on relevant social outcomes,
such as political choice.
The Contemporary Italian Political
System
Italy, like the United States and other democratically organized societies,
is undergoing a remarkable political transition in which political
parties previously identified as extremely divergent on the ends of
continuums of political opposition now "regress toward the mean."
New coalitions have formed, and continue to evolve, that mesh prior
political antagonists into pragmatically organized entities, under
new banners, broadly appealing slogans, and contingently varying policies.
Before the early 1990s, the conservative-right could be differentiated
from the liberal-left around sociological variables such as gender
(men were overrepre- sented among left voters), age (older), income
or socio-economic status (SES) (higher), and occupation (more professionals
and white-collar workers). In con- trast, the new Italian coalitions
cut across most such traditional boundary markers. Recently, the political
power of the Christian Democrats, Republicans, Liber- als, Socialists,
and Communists suddenly collapsed, after 40 years of ruling Italy
in various combinations. In their place, two main coalitions formed:
center-left and center-right. To the left side of this central position
went some of the former Christian Democrats, some ex-Socialists, ex-Republicans,
and all the ex-Communists (renamed Partito Democratico della Sinista,
PDS, and Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, PRC). To the right
migrated other Christian Democrats, Socialists, ex-Liberals (under
a new party title, Forza Italia), and all the heirs of the Neo-Fascists
(under the banner of Allianza Nazionale). Furthermore, a separatist
movement independent from the other parties (the Lega Nord) captured
a signifi- cant portion of votes, mostly in northern Italy. The center-right
prevailed in the national elections of 1994, but its period of instability
ended with new elections in 1996, in which the center-right ("Polo
delle libertà") had a slight popular majority, but the center-left
("Ulivo") prevailed with greater parliamentary representation (because
of an electoral system in which a slight majority of votes did not
allow the center-right to achieve a parliamentary majority). The most
basic ideological and political propaganda differences between these
two new coalitions (each filled with many former political "enemies")
can be summarized as the center-left expressing greater concern about
issues of social welfare and equity (i.e., distributive justice) while
the center-right emphasizes its concerns for individual freedom, economic
deregulation, and self-ownership of business. If the center-left were
now "community-oriented liberals," the new center-right were "free
market-oriented libertarians." In the 1996 electoral cam- paign, the
center-right's appeal was its power to enact innovative approaches
to Italy's economic problems, using dynamic entrepreneurial strategies
to reward individual initiative. By contrast, the center-left campaigned
around issues of broadening people's rights, increasing well-being
and quality of life, along with promoting full employment, health
care, social security, and education. The voters' primary concerns
were channeled around issues of high taxes and unemployment, according
to our surveys (Caprara, Calo', & Barbaranelli, 1997).
Personality Profiles Predicting
Political Party Preferences
We believe that despite the substantial overlap between these political
powers on many dimensions, the central discriminating features of
their political profiles could be mapped onto the personality taxonomy
provided by the FFM. Our exploratory hypothesis was that adult voters
who chose the center-right political party in the recent Italian elections
would be, on average, those highest on the personality factor of Energy,
but low on Agreeableness. In contrast, center-left voters would reveal
the opposite pattern of dominant traits, with Agreeableness being
most prominent. They could also be expected to be high on Openness
to Experiences or Culture (or Intellect), given the traditionally
greater involvement among "intellectuals" and "intelligentsia" with
more Leftist political philosophy. Emotional Stability should be equally
distributed across both political orientations, thus being an irrelevant
personality dimension in their differentiation. It was difficult to
predict which political orientation would be marked by greater Consci-
entiousness. It was part of the propaganda of the center-right, asserting
that only they had the energy, vision, and also the persistence
needed to lead Italy in new directions. However, Conscientiousness
could also be an attribute of those on the center-left, if the concept
is interpreted as being reliable in its commitment to people,
and following through on their promises of a better quality of life
in Italy. By statistically controlling for demographic variables such
as age, gender, and education, we hoped to ascertain whether these
variables had any effect on political orientation of our examined
population, as found earlier with national data showing slight preferences
of youth and women for the center-right coalition (Calvi & Vannucci,
1995). We also wanted to determine whether any interactions between
personality and demographic variables were significant. Finally, we
intended to assess the differential impact of personality and relevant
demographic variables on political choice. Our predictions were developed
from an analysis of the actual contents of political programs and
propaganda presented by the center-left and center-right coalitions
during the 1996 national election campaign. Previous research by Di
Renzo (1963) found that Italian left-oriented politicians tended to
be more open-minded than Italian right-oriented politicians. However,
these results are more than 30 years old, reflecting a political situation
very different from the one currently functioning in Italy. More recent
studies have examined different populations as well as different contexts
for relating Openness to political views. Trapnell (1994) and McCrae
(1996) demonstrated that, at least in Western societies, the more
people are open-minded the more they are politically left-oriented,
while the less they are open-minded the more they are politically
right-oriented. McCrae noted that "variations in Openness are the
major psychological determinant of political polarities" (1996, p.
325) because "openness predisposes individuals toward liberal political
views" (p. 327). Our predictions are also based on assumptions about
the ways in which individuals' dominant personality traits guide their
perceptions of media messages, as well as their decisions about the
kind of experiences and people with which they will become involved
(in this regard, see Driscoll, Hamilton, & Sorrentino, 1991; Shaller,
Boyd, Yohannes, & O'Brien, 1995; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994).
We reasoned that "energetic-dominant" people should be more attracted
by leaders and parties strongly emphasizing individualism and self-ownership
(center-right), whereas "agreeable-friendly" people should find more
congenial political agendas emphasizing solidarity and collective
well-being (center-left). Those open to new ideas and experiences
should be more sympathetic to political programs empha- sizing education,
multiculturalism, and tolerance of diversity (center-left). Thus,
the present research examined the interplay between the "public per-
sona" of these two new political coalitions, in terms of their electoral
rhetoric and image construction, and the "private persona" of the
personality profiles of voters who chose to affiliate with one or
the other coalition. We should add that the match between voter personalities
and political party orientation is also influenced by the personalities
of political leaders, or more accurately, by voter perceptions of
the candidates' personalities (see Jones & Hudson, 1996). Those
perceptions may be veridical, or "constructed" and "managed" by the
campaign staff or public relations units of political parties. The
present study did not go beyond investigating the first case of the
association between personality of voters and political orientation.
Discussion and Conclusions
Across a large, diverse sample of Italian voters, specific personality
profiles were predicted and found to be associated significantly with
preferences for either of two contemporary political coalitions. These
new political coalitions are com- posed of heterogeneous arrays of
former political adversaries functioning as expedient, pragmatic electoral
entities. Despite considerable overlap in the demo- graphic structure
of supporters of both coalitions, those that endorsed the platform
of the center-right coalition were characterized as especially high
on the Energy personality dimension of the FFM, slightly positive
on Conscientiousness, but with low trait scores on Friendliness and
Openness. Exactly the opposite personality profile characterized those
citizens who preferred the center-left coalition, with high degrees
of Friendliness (Agreeableness) and Openness. The fifth factor of
Emotional Stability played no role in political party preference,
as we had expected given its irrelevance to any aspect of the ideology,
leadership style, party platform, or propaganda of either coalition.
Our analyses at the facet level allow further specification of the
differences among the two groups of voters. Both facets of Friendliness
and both facets of Openness differentiated between the two groups,
as did the Dominance facet of Energy, whereas the level of the other
Energy facet (Dynamism) was almost equal in the two groups. In particular,
the BFQ Dominance items that most differentiated the two groups were:
"I'm willing to apply myself to the very end just to excel," "I'm
always sure of myself," "Nothing is obtained in life without being
competi- tive" (where center-right voters were higher than their rivals),
and "I don't like work environments where there's a lot of competition"
(where center-left voters outperformed center-right voters). We highlight
again the fact that these relationships between personality traits
and political party identification were independent of any apparent
influences of age, gender, or education, when they were statistically
controlled. However, one may question whether the BFQ Openness scale
is just another index of political ideology; if so, its value as a
correlate of political affiliation would be compro- mised. We can
disentangle this potential confounding by examining the content of
the BFQ Openness items that differentiated the two groups. They are:
"I prefer to read rather than engage in a sports activity" (where
center-left voters outperformed their rivals), "I'm not interested
in television programs which are too serious," "I don't devote much
time to reading," "I don't think knowing history serves much," "I
don't waste time acquiring knowledge that's not strictly related to
my field of interest," "Life-styles and customs of other peoples have
never interested me," and "I don't know what pushes people to behave
differently from the norm" (where center-right voters outperformed
their rivals). With the exception of the last item, none of these
items refers to tolerance of values, politics, or liberalism. It is,
therefore, reasonable to construe the BFQ Openness scale as indexing
something other than political orientation or political ideology.
This result provides further support for our conclusion that new personality
assessment instruments, such as the BFQ, deserve wider use in facilitating
the systematic exploration of linkages between personality variables
and political choices. We encourage their further use in exploring
the rich intermediate process-level of social-cognitive dynamics,
such as party propaganda, candidate image design, and the schema,
perceptions, and persuasability of voters. The remainder of this paper
outlines some constraints on our conclusions in light of recent criticisms
of the limitations of the FFM and the nonrandom nature of our sample.
We then present some suggestions for rethinking the personality- politics
linkages in terms of more dynamic, multidirectional, bicausal models.
Finally, we consider ways to widen the scope of future investigations
by using new analyses of voters' perceptions of the personality of
political candidates, along with a cost-benefit analysis of information-gathering
and retention by voters of political parties' persuasive communications
and media messages designed to focus or bias voting decisions.
Enhancing the Utility of the
FFM
Recent reviews of the FFM have raised both specific and general criticisms
about its validity and usefulness in personality research. Critics
have noted some limitations, such as overgeneralizability, "folk psychology"
development status, lack of truly orthogonal factors, different trait
names for the five factors in different measuring systems, and conceptualization
that defies disconfirmation. Counter-replies have challenged some
of these criticisms while incorporating some of the cogent insights,
where possible, into more coherent conceptions of this new "human
compass" that attempts to map individual differences in personality
onto a common reference structure (see Barrick & Mount, 1991;
Briggs, 1992; Caprara, 1996; McCrae & John, 1992; Ozer & Reise,
1994). It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with this substantial
literature, rather recognizing the potential constructive value of
the current heated debate between advocates and adversaries of this
approach to personality assessment. Readers are reminded of the limitations
posed by the "convenience" sample used here for its inexpensive utility
rather than the more costly, but scientifically appropriate, random
administration of the personality scales and determination of voting
behavior. In defense, we can only point to the large size of the sample,
its diversity in terms of age, education, and occupation, and its
gender balance, along with the results showing that some of these
demographic variables "behaved" in line with prior data collected
from random surveys of the Italian electorate in 1994 (see Calvi &
Vannucci, 1995). We should also mention a recent empirical failure
of personality factors to be related to political orientation
(Mehrabian, 1996). The only significant effects found were a positive
correlation between Conservatism and Conscientiousness and a negative
correlation of Conservatism with Intellect, which fit in general with
our reported findings. However, two features of that research limit
its validity and generalizability, namely small sample sizes (fewer
than 100 respondents in any of the studies) and indirect measurement
of political orientation by self-report scales of Conservatism and
Libertarianism rather than by actual political party affiliation of
voters, as in the present study.
Personality, Beliefs, Persuasion,
and Schema Activation
Our research is based on a relatively simple model in which voter
personality traits and political party preferences are correlated,
either because particular personality traits guide the selection by
individuals of certain kinds of experiences, or because political
party values and ideologies select personalities from the general
distribution as followers or "true believers." However, we are aware
that Readers are referred to the following critiques for a fuller
appreciation of the important conceptual and empirical issues they
pose: Block (1995), McAdams (1992), Pervin (1994), and Tellegen (1993).
in reality only a multicausal, feedback model can begin to capture
the dynamic interaction among the key variables and catalytic processes
operating in the contemporary political arena of democratic countries.
We propose further that such analyses must also include multiple levels,
including intrapsychic, social, and systems levels of variables and
processes. For example, it is important to understand the set of dynamics
in the initial organization of a political party or coalition because
the party selects political candidates who have particular personality
traits they deem desirable to voters. Party propaganda and media-controlled
information dissemination help to create, construct, or mod- ify the
personality images of candidates in the voters' minds. Voters try
to get optimal information about the current political scene at minimal
information- processing cost, relying on well-defined schemata to
provide simplistic, heuristic short cuts to establishing their preferences.
But voter personalities, beliefs, and values also bias the ways in
which they process available political information and their sense
of match/mismatch with particular political candidates' personalities
and ideologies (Tetlock, 1983). During an election campaign, some
of these variables will be shifting and modified by feedback from
polls of party/candidate popularity (see Crewe & King, 1994).
Thus, even this cursory overview under- scores the necessity of raising
the general level of complexity of future investiga- tions into the
fascinating dynamics at work in the arena of political psychology
(see Bean & Mughan, 1989). Future researchers can add to our fuller
appreciation of these complex trans- actions by taking account first
of the voter's sense of identity and concerns for presenting a desirable
image to others (see Funder, Kolar, & Blackman, 1995). In addition,
the role of personality disposition functions simultaneously with
the belief and value systems maintained by voters. Such systems are
part of the motivational- cognitive network that directs information
acquisition, integration, and retrieval about political parties and
political leaders (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Greenwald, 1980). Those
processes should also influence voter perception of the personality
of political leaders, which in turn fosters either greater identification
and conver- gence or mismatches with them (see Simonton, 1990). "Perceptions
of leadership quality depend upon personality traits" of leaders as
judged by followers, according to Jones and Hudson's recent analysis
(1996, p. 229). They argued that leaders must present the public with
a set of traits contributing to the belief that they can lead in a
"businesslike" fashion. Public ratings of leaders are affected by
changes in their perceived personality traits, as is the party's electoral
support (Crewe & King, 1994). The modern media's role in presenting,
and even creating, political images cannot be overstated. Thus, political
parties spend enormous amounts of money on image manipulation that
typically shows their candidate as effective and energetic and/or
sympathetic, friendly, and willing to listen to the needs of the voters.
Our previous research has shown that voters in Italy and the United
States simplify their personality judgments of the major political
candidates in ongoing election campaigns by restricting the usual
five factors (which they used for self-rating and ratings of nonpolitical
public comparison figures) to a combination of only two or three factors
(Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Vicino, in press; Caprara, Barbaranelli,
& Zimbardo, 1997). These collapsed, simplified "politician's factors"
are Energy/Innovation (blending Energy and Openness) and Honesty/Trustworthi-
ness (blending Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability).
Such simplified personality perceptions of political candidates may
derive from a cognitively efficient strategy that voters adopt non-consciously
to code the mass of complex information bombarding them daily during
a political election, and to guide their eventually dichotomous decision
about voting for or against particular candidates. Because center-right
voters were more energetic and center-left voters were more friendly,
there was a complementary matching process among the voters' personalities
and the political leaders' personalities in the recent Italian national
election.
Information Costs and Communication
Processing
Another way to think about the linkages between voters' personalities
and beliefs and politicians' personalities is in terms of schematic
information processing that is fostered by political party (or coalition)
propaganda and advertisements. The costs to voters of gathering and
meaningfully organizing information relevant to their voting decision
are reduced by forming well-defined, simplifying schemata of both
leaders and parties (Jones & Hudson, 1997). The political parties
reduce the transaction costs of electoral participation by sending
out low-cost signals to voters, so that mere party affiliation alone
provides considerable information about the candidates' position on
the political spectrum. Moreover, these parties will have already
chosen leaders with particular personality trait patterns, believed
to be appealing and desirable to their intended constituency (Winter,
1987). So voters are really encouraged to engage in simplified heuristic,
or peripheral, information processing by using well-defined schematic
representations that undercut more complex, systematic information
processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Zimbardo & Leippe, 1994).
Research is needed that analyzes the nature of the persuasive messages
political parties generate in terms of their "personality" appeals
to voter personalities and candidate personalities. We hope that our
findings, along with the conceptual analyses sketched above, will
rekindle the interest of psychologists from the fields of personality,
social psychology, and cognitive psychology in the nature of the contributions
they can make collectively to the broad realm of political behavior.
As social scientists, it is imperative that we better understand and
unravel the complexities in these vital transactions between political
parties, leaders, voters, and the mediating and situational processes
that interrelate them. As citizens, we also need to become better
informed about how to mindfully cast our votes for politicians and
parties on the basis of systematic analyses of their platform and
ideological values, rather than engaging in simplistic peripheral
processing of media-created images of political candidates' personalities.
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