Political psychology

With Ben Goldsmith, I explore correlations between personality types and political attitudes. We specifically look at the Big Five personality dimensions—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness—and the extent to which they can predict attitudes towards political actors, procedures, and events. To measure these dimensions, we rely primarily on survey items well-established in the psychology literature by Oliver John and colleagues.

Our survey study focuses on American citizens’ personality types and their attitudes towards former President Donald Trump, the 2020 presidential election, and events that followed. We consider the extent to which personality types can predict attitudes towards the legitimacy of the election result, Trump’s presidency, the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Trump’s responsibility for this event.

In this study, we also consider the correlations between these attitudes and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). Following John Duckitt and colleagues, we assess RWA along the dimensions of traditionalism, conservatism, and authoritarianism. And we rely on Felicia Pratto and Jim Sidanuis in associating SDO with nationalism, ethnic prejudice and racism, as well as with sexism. RWA and SDO are related, as they both indicate reactions to perceived social threats. But while RWA is primarily an intragroup phenomenon, concerning the relationships between individuals of the same group, SDO is an intergroup phenomenon, as it concerns attitudes towards relationships between in-groups and out-groups.

Publications so far in this project:
Forthcoming. The Personality of a Personality Cult? Personality Characteristics of Donald Trump’s Most Loyal Supporters. Political Psychology (with Ben Goldsmith).