Are Political Views Shaped by Personality Traits?

Where do our political beliefs come from? There is increasing evidence that an
important part of the answer is deep-rooted within our nature.

It seems that we are predisposed to have certain personality traits and, ultimately, certain
political tastes. Psychologists normally measure your personality by asking questions about your
approach to life. The measures are known as the 'Big Five': openness to experience,
conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. These are neither good nor bad,
but simply aspects of who you are.

For example, someone scoring high in conscientiousness will tend to be more organised
than the average person, but also more inflexible. Scores on these different traits predict lots of
things about us: from healthy eating to marital stability.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Big Five also correlate with people's political views.
Jeff Mondak, political science professor at the University of Illinois, says that people who score
high in openness and low in conscientiousness are more likely to be left wing.

He argues that "openness equates with the willingness to try new things. And that includes
new policies. Conscientiousness often signals a very strong sense of personal responsibility: it
would be viewed as our own job, not the government's job, to take care of us."

'Darker' personality traits

These may not be the only personality traits which shape our politics, however. There is
also the 'Dark Triad': Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. The most important one of
these for political behavior is narcissism. This is not just about admiring your reflection and
attention seeking, but also a sense of importance and entitlement. Two key components of
narcissism - exhibitionism and a sense of entitlement - correlate with our political views.
Entitlement is associated with more right-wing positions and exhibitionism with more left-wing
positions. Narcissists are also generally more likely to get involved in politics.

Julie Blais, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at

Dalhousie University, says: "People with narcissistic traits are much more likely to engage. It's a
way of getting attention and make themselves appear better than other people."

What shapes our personality?

Personality differences appear to be related to our political views and our political
participation. But where do these differences come from? If you take the British population
today, about half the variation in personality traits appears to be genetically inherited. That
doesn't mean that there is a single gene which decides our personality. Nor is it a specific part of
the brain.

Kevin Mitchell, an associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College,

Dublin, says that personality traits are "manifestations of how the brain is put together - there
aren't little bits of the brain doing one job or another."

Are we predisposed to our political views?

Does this all mean that our political views are also partly biological?
Like personality, political ideology is genetically heritable to some extent and one
explanation for this is that innate personality traits, like the Big Five or narcissism, cause
political attitudes.
However, some argue that there is actually something deeper in our biology that directly
links to our politics.
Maybe it is very basic preferences, perhaps related to risk or threat avoidance, from
humanity's evolutionary past which inform our modern day political preferences.
Rose McDermott, professor of political science and international relations at Brown
University, says: "The specific issue, whether it's taxes or welfare, can change over time and
from country to country. But the underlying issues remain: How do we decide who gets what
within our community; how do we decide who's allowed into our community; how do we decide
who we're going to fight against?"
These core differences continue to exist because there was never an evolutionary 'right
answer' to those questions in the past, she says.
"When something is so much better than every all every other alternative it converges to
universality. So why have we not converged universally on ideology? Because we need both.
You need liberals for cooperation, but you also need conservatives because you have to defend
those co-operators."
A bit more understanding?
Of course, there are some important caveats to the idea that biology equals ideology.
First off, these are simply tendencies. My genetic make-up does not determine my
personality or my political views; it just influences them. Second, this is about people's attitudes,
not their votes. There is no biological imperative to support party X over party Y.
Nonetheless, we should probably take seriously the idea that our political attitudes are
partially due to our personality or other innate tendencies that we cannot do much about. Perhaps
ironically, this might be helpful in reducing one of the bugbears of the modern age: political
polarisation. Polarisation is all about 'us' versus 'them'.
Maybe one way of countering that is to accept that 'they' just have different preferences to
'us'. This is not because 'they' are stupid, brainwashed or ignorant, just that 'we' are different to
'them'.
As Kevin Mitchell says: "Conflict usually arises because people's goals differ with each
other and the things that they value in a given situation differ. And at some level, part of those
differences come from our biology."

James Tilley is a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus
College, Oxford. He presents 'Personality Politics' on BBC Radio 4 at 20:30 GMT on Monday 1
February 2021.