Political Ideology and Personality

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The Ideological Animal

There's been quite a bit of research into how personality and other psychological variables correlate with political views. For example, openness to experience positively correlates with liberalism (here we can see a liberal's tendency to be accepting of different cultures and religions and a proliferation in the arts and humanities) while conscientiousness correlates more strongly with conservatism (so we find the conscientious drive to order projected into society as a whole and a preference to spend one's time doing concretely productive, profitable things). Some personality traits may lead a person to be more sympathetic to a liberal point of view while others yet may lead them to simultaneously be drawn to a conservative point of view. For example, conservatives tend to support a more aggressive "war on terror" and stricter laws on immigration because they often viscerally fear the threat of terrorists and illegal immigrants overrunning their community. A conscientious person becomes anxious when things aren't "just so." They become palpably distraught by an untidy room, for example (my mom constantly chides me to keep my place clean although I wouldn't consider her conscientious nearly to the point of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder). Obviously you're going to run into plenty of conscientious progressives; they have the sense of idealism to set about turning a progressive worldview into reality. You can also find plenty of political conservatives who are irresponsible slobs.

Consider how your personality relates to your political views. I suppose I am fairly open to experience; after all, I was willing to forsake the religion of my birth on intellectual grounds for atheism, and I enjoy intellectual pursuits. I am also interested in other cultures to an extent (or at the very least, trying their food!). My experience of having been bullied and ostracized leads me to be sympathetic with the "underdog" and disadvantaged people; I have also experienced the life setbacks that have nearly brought me to having to rely on some aspects of the welfare state in my past (probably many with Asperger's syndrome have), so I can personally understand the value of the welfare state. I also tend to become quite empathetically moved by the plight of the unemployed and uninsured, so I tend to see a value in the state (perceived as the agency of the common weal rather than an enemy of the people) "doing something" about it. My sense of not being much like most people and my strong preference for autonomy matches a high drive for personal freedom with few restrictions on speech, belief, sexuality, etc. I don't feel particularly "at one" with nature or anything New Agey like that, so I'm not a hardcore greenie (I do feel more concerned about humans than other animals or nature more abstractly although I feel revolted by the thought of animal abuse), but I do enjoy spending time outdoors and find more recreational value in, say, a visit to a scenic park than watching a sitcom on TV.

Ok, sure.

Instead, I'll give you results from www.yourmorals.org and the tests there which are conducted by psychology researchers.

On the Hong Reactance Scale, which measures how oppositional a person becomes to being told to do something, I got a 4.4 out of 5, where the standard level is around 3. Now, whether I answered correctly or not, this indicates that by virtue of my personality, I at least express that I am more uncomfortable with being told what to do than most other people. This fits in relatively well with a libertarian mindset.

For the Moral Foundations Sacredness Scale, my score is significantly lower than most other groups, both liberal and conservative. This suggests that my view of "sacredness" is not as high as those other groups of people. This explains to some extent, why a person such as myself may have less issues leaving certain things to the "unromantic" affairs of business, rather than seeking to have "society" or "the people" handle these issues. In fact, libertarians are more likely to score low on this than any other group based upon what I have heard.

On the Identification with All Humanity Scale, I actually score very low on all categories compared to both conservatives and liberals, which is likely going to reflect a more individualist mindset with less ties to a common ground, and thus reflect a person with less invested into that notion of commonality.

I think other psychological tendencies can be found which further promote the reasons why I might tend towards my ideology. In fact, at this point, I feel relatively uncertain about my ideology as an objective matter, but this is partially because I've become less interested over time with politics, and certainly have begun to question myself and mankind to a degree that causes me to doubt whether anybody could have the right solution. Generally speaking though, my gut instincts are that the lives of human beings are very over-regulated(including children), that central authorities aren't as knowledgeable as they think they are, and that political processes should be distrusted, particularly if they lead to conclusions that can significantly impact the lives of others without the direct consent of those others. (I don't think highly of the social contract or implied consent)