Political attitudes develop independently of personality traits.

ABSTRACT: The primary assumption within the recent personality and political orientations literature is that personality traits cause people to develop political attitudes. In contrast, research relying on traditional psychological and developmental theories suggests the relationship between most personality dimensions and political orientations are either not significant or weak. Research from behavioral genetics suggests the covariance between personality and political preferences is not causal, but due to a common, latent genetic factor that mutually influences both. The contradictory assumptions and findings from these research streams have yet to be resolved. This is in part due to the reliance on cross-sectional data and the lack of longitudinal genetically informative data. Here, using two in

SUBMITTER: Hatemi PK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4347987 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature