Segmentation based on personality traits:
An online cross-sectional study in Greece
Name: Alexandra Pantavou
Student Number: 11351519
Contact information: alexandra.pantavou@student.uva.nl
Academic Institute: University of Amsterdam and Graduate School of Communication
Study Program: Master’s Program Communication Science
Supervisor: Dr. M. Marjolein Moorman
Course: Master’s Thesis
Date of completion: January 31, 2018
As political marketing collaborates with political psychology, personality traits become increasingly interesting to study in the field of political behavior. The integration of
psychometric targeting in the political marketing routines of the “Brexit” and Trump’s U.S. presidential election campaigns, sparked the inspiration of this study’s topic. The thesis explores the relationship between personality and political behavior and tries to answer the question of what is the effectiveness of using psychometric traits as a segmentation method in political campaigns. In order to study this relationship, I conducted an online survey on a sample of 726 students living in Athens, Greece and studied how the five-factor model of personality, vote choice and political ideology associate with each other. Results suggest that certain traits predict political ideology -Intellect and agreeableness correlate with left-wing ideologies and conscientiousness and extraversion correlate with right-left-wing ideologies- but the traits account only for a small percentage of the variance explain in the variable (6.1%). This indicates that personality, at least for the Greek example, is not the most effective predictor of political behavior, and voter segmentation based only on personality would probably not be efficient enough on its own. All in all, further research could continue on the topic of psychometric traits and political behavior, by comparing personality traits to a variety of socio-demographics using a bigger sample, in the ultimate quest of revealing all significant and effective predictors of vote choice and voter segmentation.
Introduction
Political marketing experts are turning towards psychometric targeting, but why? This new form of voter segmentation is implemented through micro-targeting techniques and personalized communication, which means that instead of addressing the potential voter on the basis of his/her socio-demographic profile, psychometric targeting accustoms the message to the voter’s personality (Mathieson, 2017). Among the various definitions of political marketing, the one created by Jennifer Lees-Marshment (2014) has been the most
concise definition until today. Her definition states, that political marketing is the way that political elites use their tools to understand, respond to, involve and communicate with their political market in order to achieve their goals. Breaking this definition down into steps, we observe the following pattern revealing itself. The political elites target the electoral market and by using the appropriate tools they act in hope of winning the citizens vote (Lees-Marshment, 2009). The first step of this pattern - and the one that this study primarily concentrates on - is the identification of the target voter. Arguably, voter profiling is the first and fundamental step in any communication plan, as knowing precisely to whom to send the message can both save the campaigns’ financial resources and guarantee better results (Jamieson, 2013).
For many years political campaigns and exit polls concentrated around the concepts of voting behavior and socio demographics (Grassegger & Krogerus, 2017). During the digital years, however, with the help of big data, political campaigns have evolved and we are now witnessing the emerge of new political marketing tools, such as micro targeting. Micro targeting, is the technique of targeting citizens down to an individual level, so that the message can reflect the citizens personal issues directly and more efficiently than ever before (Barocas, 2012). As personalized messages are progressively gaining more
popularity in all communication fields, the idea of implementing new dimensions to targeting and market segmentation is now being explored. Next to the socio demographic and voting behavior methods, political campaigns now are adding the technique of psychometric targeting to their routine (Jeffries, 2017). The technique of psychometric targeting is based on knowing the individual’s personality traits, for example how altruist or selfish, how traditional or progressive or how anxious or calm the person is before exposing them to a message, and then changing the message in order to fit with his personality preferences (Barocas, 2012). Admittedly, over the last couple of years, psychometric targeting has successfully been implemented in campaigns, sometimes in order to engage and get the citizens out to vote, and other times, in order to distract them from voting the opponent.
Two recent examples come to mind when talking about micro targeting campaigns using psychological voter profiling. A rather recent example of a personalized political campaign is the unexpected win of Donald Trump in the USA. This campaign was developed by the social research company “Cambridge Analytica”, which based the campaign’s power on social media, by targeting all different types of individuals and exposing them to messages especially tailored to their profiles (Jeffries, 2017). These messages most of the times served in favor of Trump by targeting peoples’ personalities and sending them the same message but each time with a different tone which was more likely to appeal to their personality, and other times focused on distracting democrat voters from voting for his opponent Clinton (Mathieson, 2017). A similar example is the “Brexit”
campaign, which was also developed by “Cambridge Analytica” and used psychographic profiling. Undoubtedly, both of these campaigns succeeded, but the extent to which they owe their success to psychometric targeting, is still unsure. These changes in the
communication field, with micro targeting, personalized messages and psychometric targeting, have raised questions about the traditional strategies of political marketing and voter segmentation. The main of these questions, I aim to explore with this study. I attempt to investigate the relationship between personality traits -operationalized using the Big Five personality traits – and political behavior, in order to reveal to what extend personality does in fact accounts for political ideology and vote choice.
RQ: To what extent do psychometric traits explain political behavior?
More specifically, I explore how the Big Five psychometric traits of Intellect (Openness), Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion predict each party's voter choice and the participants political ideology. These five personality traits dimensions, referred to as Big Five, are a taxonomy of relatively stable patterns of thinking, feeling and behavior, that researchers have used before when assessing personality (Digman, 1990). I endeavor to answer this question by investigating the Greek political landscape. I chose to explore the relationship between personality and political behavior in a small western democratic country with a multi-party system, such as Greece, as other
southern European countries, such as Spain and Italy can compare their results to this political landscape. I distribute the survey study among a student sample of 726 young adults, ranging in age from 18 to 35 and currently living in Athens.
Segmentation in political communication
When approaching a potential audience an important strategy to think about is segmentation. Segmentation in politics, is the art of identifying what sort of voters live where and then how to most effectively address those voters in a way that is most effective for the campaign (Lees-Marshment, 2009). Both big and small parties, can greatly benefit from sufficiently implying targeting to campaigns methods such as GOTV, persuasion targeting, small donation prospecting and volunteer raising and canvassing. Political segmentation, tries to identify common characteristics in the heterogeneous mass electoral market and later categorize the citizens in more or less likely voters. The variables of categorization can vary drastically over time and between countries. For instance, new emerging democracies, such as the one in Ghana, Africa require the deviation of the electorate according to their religion and ethnicity (Lees-Marshment, 2009). However, modern western democratic political campaigns give their focus on the electorates socio economics and voter behavior.
Efficiently implying voter targeting in a campaign can occasionally prove to be challenging. For socio economics, one standard group within democracy is age. Various studies have depicted the differences between young voters and elder ones, with the latter group being significantly more conservative, compared to the first one (Davidson, 2005; Tilley, and Evans, 2014). Nonetheless, every categorization has its exceptions. People of a certain age group can vary remarkably from each other, depending on their economic status, education or residential area (rural vs. urban), to name a few. This makes socio economic categorization increasingly complex and voter prediction highly difficult (Lees-Marshment, 2009). Among the number of ways in which politicians decide who to target, is also voting behavior, which is rather simpler in implementation than socio economics. Voter behavior is
divided into traditional supporters of the party, floating voters and opposition voters (Lees-Marshment, 2009).
Micro targeting in political campaigns
Segmentation during the digital years, has opened a new way of voter categorization with the technique of micro targeting. Micro targeting has a lot in common with traditional demographic and geographic targeting, except to the fact, that instead of targeting a whole region or a specific demographic group, micro targeting allows one to target the voter down to an individual level or “micro” level, by using algorithms. As Young (2014, p.12) defined it,
“Micro-targeting is the ability to dissect in this case, the voter population into narrow segments and customize messaging to them, both in on-the-ground activities and in the media.”. Nowadays, sophisticated data mining methods and complicated statistical
processes with the help of big databases, can provide greater accuracy in revealing trends over time and giving insight in market research.
Micro targeting has sparked a very vivid discussion among scholars. On the one hand, some argue that by sending personalized messages on social media, politicians contribute to the citizens fragmentation, which can ultimately lead to a filter bubble effect; meaning that everyone receives different messages tailored to him/her and there is no longer any center of information (Barocas, 2012; McQuail, 2005). With that been said, Barocas (2012) also states that, for as long as mass media remain the primary source of political information, this problem will most possibly stay under control. On the other hand, scholars argue that micro targeting has many and considerable advantages for the voter (Green, Gerber, & Larimer, 2008; Dalton, 2008; Jamieson, 2013). For instance, micro targeting has shown to help citizens engage more in the political process, as Green, Gerber and Larimer (2008, p.24) argued “interpersonal appeals of the candidate to the voter have shown to increase the likelihood of voting and the mobilizing messages the politicians sent, can affect the proportion of the total ballots cast by supportive groups”. Lastly, personalized political messages have shown to reduce issue complexity, which can also lead to further increasing on the voter turnout (Jamieson, 2013).
Psychometric traits as a new dimension to voter segmentation
During the last two years, and due to big data mining and micro targeting, we are witnessing the expansion of voter segmentation with the addition of psychometric targeting in political campaigns. On June 2016, within the United Kingdom European Union
membership referendum, the campaign advocating for the prospective withdrawal of the country, also known as the ‘Brexit’ campaign, adopted a method developed at the University of Cambridge to psychometrically profile people by using publicly available data including Facebook "likes" (Mathieson, 2017). They used these personality data in order to create effective digital advertisements and target millions of voters based on their personality, which could be one of the reasons that contributed to the campaign’s victory. Some months later, on November 2016, the story repeated itself, this time not in Europe but instead, in the United States of America, when Donald Trump won the 45th U.S. presidential election from his democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, the same technique as described above. These campaigns, despite competing against more expensive ones, managed to succeed. This financial fact raised speculations amongst campaign managers about psychometric profiling and its effectiveness, as for years it was believed that where money goes, victory follows.
Even though psychological profiling is new for political communication, it has already been around for many years in persuasive communication and advertising (Mathieson, 2017). As the merge between marketing and politics continues, it is to be expected that certain tools from the field, sooner or later, will be adopted in political communication too. Psychological profiling has now entered the field of political communication and is promising big changes in the economics of political targeting, by making political communication cheaper and highly efficient (Mathieson, 2017). Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica claims that, “election campaigns have been organized based on demographic
concepts. A really ridiculous idea. The idea that all women should receive the same
means is that while other campaigners so far have relied on demographics, Cambridge Analytica was using psychometrics (Jeffries, 2017). Politicians are now, more than ever, able to reach groups that have previously been ignored for many years and were not bothered to vote as a result, for example the non- voters. After all, a big following for Trump came exactly from this neglected segment of people who had been politically inactive for many years (Grassegger & Krogerus, 2017). Psychological profiling, hence, despite the heavy critic it has received for being part of controversial campaigns, has the potential of bringing more people to the dialogue and engaging them in democratic procedures.
Psychology and Politics
The traits of a person’s general psychological tendencies, fall under the rubric of “personality”. By knowing something about a person’s general psychological tendencies, we are potentially able to enrich our understanding of this person’s specific behaviors and attitudes (Mondak, 2011, p.23). During the last 50 years, numerous studies have found associations between personality traits and political behavior. To name a few of the fields of influence, personality is found to influence political ideology (McClosky, 1964), political tolerance (Marcus, 1982) and authoritarianism (Stenner, 2005). Be that as it may, these studies, mostly concentrated on investigating the personalities of political leaders, when arguably the most prominent avenue for research is to investigate the link between voter personality and democratic values (Mondak, 2011, p.21). Following on the new trend of voters’ personality segmentation, I conduct this research with the help of the Big Five personality trait dimensions approach.
The Big Five approach
Trait psychology has developed drastically over the past two decades and this has led to the construction of taxonomies that are ideal for empirical research on mass political behavior (Mondak, 2011, p.55). The perspective that is implied in the particular study is the
“Big Five” approach, which provides a highly comprehensive and hierarchical model of trait structure (Mondak, 2011, p.56). The five trait dimensions that I explore are, Intellect
(Openness), Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Extraversion. These five factors have been used multiple times by researchers in psychology, and it is often argued that these trait dimensions can summarize the nature of human personality (Bakker, 2015). Additionally, many academics and researchers in the political communication field have also used the Big Five trait dimensions when measuring psychometric traits and consider it very reliable (Mondak, 2011; Bakker, 2015; Vecchione, 2011). In the following segment, I will give a summary of what these factors represent and how they can associate with political
behavior.
Intellect or openness to new experience, is a trait associated with imaginative, curious and innovative individuals, who have a preference for engaging in new activities and the willingness to reconsider held beliefs (Bakker, 2015; McCrae & Costa, 2003, p. 46). Their counterparts are more traditional, risk averse, conservative individuals, who are cautious towards new ideas. High levels of intellect (openness) have shown to relate with liberal social policies and on the other hand lower levels relate to conservatism (Schoen & Schumann 2007; Gerber et al. 2010; Bakker, 2015).
Agreeableness is a trait associated with generous, caring and altruistic individuals, who have trust towards others, modesty and high tolerance (Costa et al. 1991; Mondak, 2011, p. 58). Their counterparts are more egoistic, intolerant and usually more
uncooperative (McCrae 1996: 329). High levels of agreeableness have shown to relate with the collective well-being, thus more left-wing ideologies and on the other hand lower levels relate more individualistic ideologies (Gerber et al., 2010, p. 116; Barbaranelli et al., 2007).
Neuroticism is a trait associated with anxious, nervous and emotionally unstable individuals, who generally dwell in what might go wrong (McCrae & Costa, 2003, p. 46; Gerber et al. 2010). Their counterparts are more emotionally stable, calm, relaxed
in some studies it relates with right-wing ideologies and other studies show Neuroticism to correlate with left-wing ideologies (Gerber et al., 2010, p.118; Mondak, 2011, p. 63).
Conscientiousness is a trait associated with hard working, ambitious and reliable individuals, who have a preference for tradition, discipline and organization (Mondak, 2011, p. 86; Bakker, 2015). Their counterparts are more impatient, careless, immature individuals, who are risk seeking (McCrae & Costa, 2003, p. 50). Lastly, high levels of
Conscientiousness have shown to relate with right-wing ideologies that encourage economic self- responsibility (Carney et al., 2008; Gerber et al., 2010).
Extraversion is a trait that is inconsistently associated with ideology and vote choice however is associated with outgoing and social individuals, who speak out their minds (McCrae & Costa, 2003, p. 46; Schoen & Schumann, 2007). Their counterparts are shy and usually introvert individuals (Mondak, 2011, p. 57). Some studies show that Extraverts prefer to be related with grassroots democracy and personal self-determination (Carney et al., 2008; Schoen & Schumann, 2007, p. 479).
The Greek example
Continuing, in order to have an understanding of the political landscape in Greece, I will give a brief insight on the outcome of the most recent Greek elections, on the 21st of September 2015. It was then, when the left-wing political party “Syriza” won the snap elections, by gathering the 35.5% of the voter turnout (Smith & Wearden, 2015). This win was considered to be a great victory for Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the party, as during his first term in office, after winning the elections over from the center right-wing party “New Democracy” six months earlier, he had been excessively criticized for approving the third economic adjustment program for Greece. These critics originated mostly from the fact that during the election campaign, “Syriza” had been promoting anti-austerity messages that the party failed to deliver ones they went into office. Nonetheless, despite the heavy critics, Tsipras managed to keep his popularity as the results and the polls indicated (Henley &
Nardelli, 2015). In these elections, apart from “Syriza”, seven more parties entered the parliament. With this study, I aim to reveal the psychometric traits of the typical voter of the biggest Greek parties and investigate the relationship of personality and political ideology. With the help of table 1, I present the eight parties in parliament and their ideological stand.
Table 1. Greek parties in parliament, September 2015.
Name Acronym People’s
representative Leader or Chairman
Communist Party of Greece KKE Far-left Dimitris
Koutsoumpas Coalition of the Radical Left
- Unitary Social Front SYRIZA Left-wing Alexis Tsipras
Democratic Alignment DISI Centre-left Fofi Gennimata
Union of Centrists EK Centrist Vassilis Leventis
The River POTAMI Centrist Stavros Theodorakis
New Democracy ND Centre-right Antonis Samaras
Independent Greeks ANEL Right-wing Panos Kammenos
Golden Dawn XA Far-right Nikolaos
Michaloliakos
*information provided by the Wikipedia page of the Hellenic Parliament, available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Parliament.
Research design
For the purpose of investigating my research question, the appropriate research method to be used is a survey. In order to identify the psychometric characteristics of Greek voters, I use an online self-administered cross-sectional survey design. One chief
characteristic of s survey design is the ability of reaching a large sample of the population in a quick time period. Additionally, the surveys’ modality is online, which is cost effective, delivers quicker results than any other form of a self- completion questionnaire and limits the probability of any interviewer biases. The individuals are asked to answer questions
regarding their political Ideology, personality and voting choices. The responders are informed that the survey is used for research reasons and it is administered on behalf of a
student of the University of Amsterdam, during her master thesis. Before proceeding to it the participants are assured that all data will be kept confidential.
The data are gathered through a stratified sampling method. The individuals are recruited via posts on the Athenian Universities groups on Facebook, thus the participants are members of a convenience sample. The total number of responders in the survey is 1.230, out of which 726 participants fulfill the criteria of age, education and residence. The selection process has the following criteria of exclusion. The participants need to qualify as university students living in the urban area of Athens, Greece and between the age of 18-34. Consequently, the mean age of the valid sample, is 23 (SD = 3.20) years and there are 216 males and 510 females. The whole of the sample is residents of Athens and the sample’s education level is distributed among the four categories as follows; 86% of it are Bachelor students, 12% Master students, 1% PhD candidates and 1% study in a Technical college. Out of the 726 valid responders, 39% chose the option not to vote, and 22% chose to vote for a not listed party. This led to only 280 people choosing to vote for the parties in
parliament. Despite fluctuation on the vote choice question, all responders indicated their position on the ideological scale.
The study is conducted for the purpose of my master thesis project, for the University of Amsterdam. After deciding on the topic of political marketing and political psychology and reviewing relevant literature, I created the online environment of the survey and recruited my sample. The participants are informed about the nature of this study and those who chose to continue, answer a questionnaire which measures their psychometric properties with 20 items, then they are asked to indicate for which party they would vote if the elections were held today and next, position themselves on the ideological scale. Lastly, the participants answer some socio-demographic questions.
Over the six-week time frame, from the 20th of October until the 3rd of December, I posted the survey on forty-seven faculty Facebook groups of the seven universities in Athens. In order to recruit the participants, the incentive of a tablet was offered to the winner of the contest, which took part after the completion of the data gathering. The individuals
interested in participating, were transferred to the Qualtrics website page, in order to proceed with the survey, through the link they were given in the Facebook post. All participants are informed about the prepuces of the study through the briefing and the debriefing section and they are given my email address, to which they could contact me if they have any remaining questions about the procedure.
Vote choice is the dependent variable of this study and is measured directly with the question “If the elections were held today, for which one of the following parties would you vote ?”. This is nominal variable that includes ten response categories, from which eight of them are the parties in parliament, plus the option “I would not vote” and “I would vote for another party”. In order to use it as the dependent variable for my analysis, I transformed this nominal variable, into ten dummy variables for each of the eight parties in parliament as well as the two additional vote choices.
Political Ideology is the second dependent variable of the study. The responders are asked to position themselves on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from “Far Left” (1) to “Far Right” (7) on the question “Where would you place yourself on the following ideological scale?” (N = 726). The variable's mean is 3.56 (SD = 1.23) and can be treated as internal.
Psychometric traits is the independent variable. This latent concept includes the five trait dimensions of Intellect (Openness), Neuroticism, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion. In order to measure these latent concepts, the 20-item mini scale of International Personality Item Pool (henceforth “mini-IPIP”), by Donnellan et al. (2006), was adopted (see Appendix A1). The scale, is chosen as it is validated, reliable and compact in comparison to earlier scales which measured the Big Five personality traits through a series of fifty questions or more. The scale’s fifty Item version, has been translated in Greek by Maria Vakola, and validated for use on the Greek population by Ypofanti, et al. (2015). From these fifty questions, the same twenty questions and in the same phrasing
order as the those used in the English version of the mini-IPIP, were combined in order to compose the Greek version of the mini-IPIP (see Appendix A2). The participants indicated the extent to which they agreed on the statements on a five-point Likert scale, e.g.: “I have frequent mood swings.”. The response categories range from 1 “Strongly Disagree” to 5 “Strongly Agree”. For the purpose of calculating the Cronbach’s alpha of the five factors, I recoded eleven out of the twenty statements. The resulting scale for Intellect (Openness) had a Cronbach’s alpha of .66 (M = 3.71, SD = 0.65), for Neuroticism .69 (M = 3.35, SD =
0.72), for Agreeableness .77 (M = 4.10, SD = 0.57), for Conscientiousness .63 (M = 3.42, SD = 0.72), and for Extraversion .73 (M = 3, SD = 0.79). These readability scores compare
adequately to Ypofanti’s 50 item scale with .78 (M = 3.26, SD = 0.64), .85(M = 2.54, SD =
0.74), .76(M = 3.60, SD = 0.59), .88(M = 3.72, SD = 0.63), .79(M = 2.37, SD = 0.72),
respectively.
Results
Despite the large number of people who took part in the survey (N= 1.230), and the equally significant number of observations that fulfilled the demographic criteria of age, education and residence (N=726), the political parties that collect more than 30 hypothetical votes to the question “If the elections were held today, for which one of the following parties would you vote?” are only three out of the eight listed parties (see Table 2). First party in preference is the “Right-wing” opposition party “ND” with 120 votes, then follows the “Left-wing” government party “Syriza” with 69 votes and lastly, close to “Syriza” comes the “Far-Left-wing” communist party “KKE” with 43 votes. A significant part of the sample chose the option “I would not vote” (N= 287), while 160 participants chose to vote for another party, rather than the ones currently in parliament. Consequently, after gathering the vote choice preferences of the sample, I adapted my analyses according to the new circumstances and run analyses for three political parties instead of all eight of them.
Table 2. Frequency of votes and political parties.
Political Party Frequency Percent (%)
KKE 43 5.9 % SYRIZA 69 9.5 % DISI 9 1.2 % EK 10 1.4 % POTAMI 14 1.9 % ND 120 16.5 % ANEL 3 0.4 % XA 11 1.5 %
Not Listed Parties 160 22 %
Non-Voters 287 39.5 %
Total 726 100 %
To begin my analysis, I compute the new variables for each one of the five psychometric traits and the vote choice variables for “Syriza”, “ND”, “KKE”, “Not listed parties”, “Non-Voters”, and “Political Ideology” (N=726). Then, I run correlations between each of the psychometric traits and the vote choices, for the purpose of revealing if and to which extend, each of these five personality trait dimensions correlate with the five vote choices. Besides my primary analysis, I also controlled for work status, education level and age in my model, as academics (i.e. Arzheimer, 2009), have previously found these
variables to be significant for political ideology and vote choice. For the dependent variable of political ideology that correlated with more than one psychometric trait variables, I then conducted a regression analysis in order to thoroughly explore its relationship with personality.
The correlation tests between psychometric properties and political Ideology revealed several statistically significant relationships, as Table 3 depicts. In more detail, there is a small but statistically significant correlation between the traits of agreeableness (r
= -.076, p = .039), intellect (Openness), (r = -.162, p < .001), extraversion (r = .122, p = .008), conscientiousness (r = .161, p < .001) and political Ideology; with the first two traits
having a negative correlation and the latter two having a positive correlation with political ideology. Since political ideology is measured from “Far Left” (1) to “Far Right” (7), I can interpret the results as the highest a person scores on intellect (Openness), and/or
agreeableness (thus the more open to new experiences and/or the more altruistic he/she is) the likeliest this person is to have a left-wing political ideology and vice versa. In addition, the highest a person scores on extraversion and/or conscientiousness (thus the more he/she seeks excitement and/or the more he/she strives to achieve) the likeliest this person is to have a right-wing political ideology and vice versa. In conclusion, all but one (neuroticism)
personality traits proved to correlate with political ideology.
Vote Choice and Personality
Going from that, I explored the relationship between the two left-wing political parties and the “Big Five”, that also proved to correlate positively with intellect (Openness), as one would suspect by the previous correlations tested on political ideology. More explicitly, there is a small but statistically significant correlation between “Syriza” (r = .096, p = .010), “KKE”
(r = .083, p = .025) voters and intellect (Openness). Furthermore, both party voters are more Table 3. Correlation coefficient values (Pearson’s r) between Big Five psychometric trait variables, gender and political ideology, vote choice.
Political
Ideology SYRIZA ND KKE
Not Listed Parties Non-Voters Neuroticism Agreeableness -.076* Extraversion .122** Conscientiousness .161*** .094* -.114** Intellect (Openness) -.162*** .096** .083* Gender -.077* -.079* .107**
Note: *p ≤ .05, **p ≤ .01, ***p ≤ .001. Ideology: Far Left” (1) to “Far Right” (7); Gender: males coded as 0; females coded as 1; Demographics: work status, education level and age, were found to be not statistically significant.
likely to be males than females, with r = -.077, p = .039 for “Syriza” and r = -.079, p = .033 for “KKE” and vice versa. On the other hand, “ND” the right-wing political party correlated positively only with Conscientiousness (r = .094, p = .011) which means that people who vote for “ND” tent to have a strong preference for order, structure and self-discipline and vice versa.
Lastly, I run correlation test between the voters for not listed parties (therefore not in parliament), non-voters and socio demographics and psychometrics. While exploring the relationship between voters who chose the not listed parties, I found that there is a negative, small but statistically significant relationship with conscientiousness (r = -.114, p = .002), hence the less structured and traditional the voter is, the more likely it is he/she is willing to support a party not in parliament and vice versa. For the people who chose not to vote at all, there was a small but significant correlation with gender (r = .107, p = .004), meaning that women are significantly more likely not to vote in the elections.
Political Ideology
Next, a multiple regression analysis with political ideology as dependent variable and agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness and intellect (Openness) as independent variables was conducted. The multiple regression shows that the model as a whole is significant, F (4, 725) = 11.68, p < .001. Conscientiousness, b* = 0.17, t = 4.48, p < .001, 95% CI [0.16, 0.41] and intellect (Openness), b* = 0.14, t = 3.77, p < .001, 95% CI [0.40, -0.13] have a significant association with political ideology, while extraversion, b* = 0.10, t = 2.76, p = .006, 95% CI [0.05, 0.27] and agreeableness, b* = -0.08, t = -2.02, p = .044, 95% CI [-0.32, -0.01] have a weaker association but still statistically significant association with political ideology. For all these effects, other independent variables are assumed to be held constant. All in all, the regression model can therefore be used to predict political ideology, but these four predictors explain 6.1% of the variance in political ideology, which is quite small.
Conclusion
The present study provides empirical research for the relationship of the Big Five psychometric traits, political vote choice and political ideology. The study revealed that political ideology correlates with four out of the five psychometric traits. Individuals who identify with right-wing political ideologies, score higher on the conscientiousness (r = .161) and extraversion (r = .122) scales. This indicates that people who like to make plans in advanced, are ambitious, like being informed, are more lively and sociable, likely follow right-wing ideologies.On the other hand, people who identify with left-wing political ideologies correlate positively with agreeableness (r =-.076) and intellect (Openness), (r = -.162), which reveals that left-wing political followers are more generous, caring, altruistic and open-minded toward new ideas and innovation. Likewise, the relationship between these traits and the vote choice is also in line with the political ideology findings. Subsequently, “ND”, which is center-right party, correlates with conscientiousness and “KKE”, a far-left party as well as “SYRIZA”, a left-wing party both correlated with intellect (Openness). Furthermore, the fifth dimension of the Big Five traits, that of “Neuroticism”, was not found to have a statistically significant effect on either of the dependent variables. The relationship between psychometrics, political vote choice and ideology, is statistically significant, but the effect size of them is quite small. All in all, segmentation based only on personality would not be very effective, however give an idea on some basic personality characteristics of the left and rig-wing voters, which can still be beneficial to political campaigns in the future.
An additional but expected reveal is the correlation between vote choice and gender. Because, the sample was chosen on the basis of age, education and residential area, I controlled in my model for socio-demographics, except from gender; Gender proved to be statistically significant as many scholars such as Arzheimer (2009) have predicted before. Women found to be statistically significant less likely to vote in the elections, and men were significantly more likely to vote for the left-wing parties, than women. However, gender did not prove to have a bigger effect than psychometrics. Future researchers should study the
combined impact of sociodemographic and psychometrics on political behavior, in order to reveal all the factors that contribute to political behavior and their effect size.
A methodological limitation of the current study is the restrained demographic characteristics of the sample, which forbids the findings from being generalizable to the broader population of the country. In order to produce more generalizable results, future researchers who wish to investigate the topic of psychometrics, sociodemographic and vote choice are recommended to reach out to a larger sample, with more variety in
sociodemographic in order to have generalizable results. Admittedly, gathering such a sample can be quite challenging, but still plausible. Since this study was conducted with a survey we cannot assume causality, so the findings are correlational and they can only be generalized to the young high educated people living in Athens, Greece (Bryman, 2015). A noteworthy finding, regarding the specific sample of the study is that the majority of
responders (39.5 %) would prefer to not vote at all if the elections were held today and 22% of the sample would prefer to vote for a smaller or newer party, instead of the once in parliament. This result is rather concerning for the democratic procedures of Greece, since the result suggests that one in two young highly educated adults living in the capital of the country, does not feel represented by the establishment.
Despite psychometrics playing a small part in the variance of political ideology (6.1%), this study, contributes to academia by providing the framework for future research to compare their results with, or even take it a step further by researching the combined effect of personality and sociodemographic on political behavior. Further studies may present results that lead to a better understanding of the multiple factors that affect political vote choice and ideology or even reveal a stronger relationship between personality and political behavior in another political system.
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Appendix A1
20-Item Mini-IPIP in English
Item Factor Text Original Item
Number
1 E Am the life of the party. 1
2 A Sympathize with others feelings. 17
3 C Get chores done right away. 23
4 N Have frequent mood swings. 39
5 I Have a vivid imagination. 15
6 E Don’t talk a lot. (R) 6
7 A Am not interested in other people’s problems. (R) 22
8 C Often forget to put things back in their proper place. (R) 28
9 N Am relaxed most of the time. (R) 9
10 I Am not interested in abstract ideas. (R) 20
11 E Talk to a lot of different people at parties. 31
12 A Feel others’ emotions. 42
13 C Like order. 33
14 N Get upset easily. 29
15 I Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas. (R) 10
16 E Keep in the background. (R) 16
17 A Am not really interested in others. (R) 32
18 C Make a mess of things. (R) 18
19 N Seldom feel blue. (R) 19
20 I Do not have a good imagination. (R) 30
Note: E = Extraversion; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; N = Neuroticism; I = Intellect/Openness; (R) = Reverse Scored Item. Original 50-item IPIP-FFM available at http://ipip.ori.org/newQform50b5.htm.
Appendix A2
20-Item Mini-IPIP in Greek
Item Factor Text Original Item
Number 1 E Είμαι η ζωή των πάρτι. 1 2 A Συμπάσχω με τα συναισθήματα των άλλων 17 3 C Κάνω τις υποχρεώσεις μου αμέσως. 23 4 N Η διάθεση μου αλλάζει διαρκώς. 39 5 I Έχω ζωηρή φαντασία. 15 6 E Δεν μιλάω πολύ. (R) 6 7 A Δεν ενδιαφέρομαι για τα προβλήματα των άλλων. (R) 22 8 C Συχνά, ξεχνώ να βάλω τα πράγματα πίσω στη θέση τους. (R) 28 9 N Είμαι χαλαρός/ή τις περισσότερες φορές. (R) 9 10 I Δεν ενδιαφέρομαι για αφηρημένες ιδέες. (R) 20 11 E Μιλάω με πολλούς και διαφορετικούς ανθρώπους στα πάρτι. 31 12 A Αισθάνομαι τα συναισθήματα των άλλων. 42 13 C Μου αρέσει η τάξη. 33 14 N Αναστατώνομαι εύκολα. 29 15 I Δυσκολεύομαι να κατανοήσω αφηρημένες ιδέες. (R) 10 16 E Προτιμώ να μένω στο παρασκήνιο. (R) 16 17 A Δεν ενδιαφέρομαι πραγματικά για τους άλλους ανθρώπους. (R) 32 18 C Τα κάνω άνω - κάτω. (R) 18 19 N Σπάνια νοιώθω μελαγχολία. (R) 19 20 I Δεν έχω καλή φαντασία. (R) 30
Note: E = Extraversion; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; N = Neuroticism; I = Intellect/Openness; (R) = Reverse Scored Item. Original 50-item IPIP-FFM available at http://ipip.ori.org/Greek50-itemBigFiveFactorMarkers.htm
