Correlation not causation: the relationship between personality traits and political ideologies.

ABSTRACT: The assumption in the personality and politics literature is that a person's personality motivates them to develop certain political attitudes later in life. This assumption is founded on the simple correlation between the two constructs and the observation that personality traits are genetically influenced and develop in infancy, whereas political preferences develop later in life. Work in psychology, behavioral genetics, and recently political science, however, has demonstrated that political preferences also develop in childhood and are equally influenced by genetic factors. These findings cast doubt on the assumed causal relationship between personality and politics. Here we test the causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes using a direction of causation s

SUBMITTER: Verhulst B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3809096 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature