From this week’s New Scientist:

“In 2003, John Jost, a psychologist at New York University, and colleagues surveyed 88 studies, involving more than 20,000 people in 12 countries, that looked for a correlation between personality traits and political orientation (American Psychologist, vol 61, p 651). Some traits are obviously going to be linked to politics, such as xenophobia being connected with the far right. However, Jost uncovered many more intriguing connections. People who scored highly on a scale measuring fear of death, for example, were almost four times more likely to hold conservative views. Dogmatic types were also more conservative, while those who expressed interest in new experiences tended to be liberals. Jost’s review also noted research showing that conservatives prefer simple and unambiguous paintings, poems and songs.

“Jost noticed a pattern emerging from these results that fits neatly into existing models of personality. Many psychologists believe personality can be categorised into five classes, relating to conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The latter two seem to have little to do with political orientation. Scores on the conscientiousness scale, however, show a significant correlation with position within the political spectrum (see Diagram).

“A much stronger link exists between political orientation and openness, which psychologists define as including traits such as an ability to accept new ideas, a tolerance for ambiguity and an interest in different cultures. When these traits are combined, people with high openness scores turn out to be almost twice as likely to be liberals.”

Fascinating article…

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