Personality and politics: Values, traits, and political choice

Gian Vittorio Caprara*, Shalom Schwartz, Cristina Capanna, Michele Vecchione, Claudio Barbaranelli

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

544 Scopus citations

Abstract

Voters' political choices have presumably come to depend more on their personal preferences and less on their social characteristics in Western democracies. We examine two aspects of personality that may influence political choice, traits and personal values, using the Five Factor Model of personality traits and the b54Schwartz (1992) theory of basic personal values. Data from 3044 voters for the major coalitions in the Italian national election of 2001 showed that supporters of the two coalitions differed in traits and values, largely as hypothesized. Center-left voters were higher than center-right voters in the traits of friendliness and openness and lower in energy and conscientiousness. Regarding values, center-left voters were higher than center-right voters in universalism, benevolence, and self-direction and lower in security, power, achievement, conformity, and tradition. Logistic regressions revealed that values explained substantial variance in past and future voting and in change of political choice, trumping personality traits. We discuss explanations for the primacy of values and implications for the social cognitive view of personality.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-28
Number of pages28
JournalPolitical Psychology
Volume27
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2006

Keywords

  • Five Factor Model
  • Personality
  • Political Choice
  • Traits
  • Values
  • Voting

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