Mapping political trust and involvement in the personality space - A meta-analysis and new evidence

Objective: Relations between the Big Five personality dispositions and individual differences in political trust and involvement in politics have been investigated in many studies. We aimed to systematically integrate these findings and further explore the correlations at different hierarchical levels of the Big Five and political trust and involvement. Method: We conducted a meta-analysis of 43 publications (N1 = 207,360 participants) and estimated latent correlations at different hierarchical levels using two additional samples (N2 = 988 and N3 = 795). Results: The meta-analysis revealed substantial correlations between involvement and openness (+), extraversion (+), and neuroticism (−), but only small correlations between trust and the Big Five. We also found a substantial amount of inconsistency in findings across studies. Our additional analyses showed that (a) correlations with the Big Five were larger for higher-order factors of general political trust (as opposed to subdimensions such as trust in politicians) and general political involvement (as opposed to subdimensions such as political interest) and (b) correlational patterns within each Big Five domain differed across facets. Conclusion: Our analyses indicate that political involvement is more strongly linked to the Big Five than political trust. We discuss the theoretical and empirical relevance of hierarchical constructs

A translation and validation of the Perceived Political Self-Efficacy (P-PSE) Scale for the use in German samples

Caprara et al. (European Journal of Social Psychology 39:1002–1020, 2009) criticized existing measures of internal political efficacy for not taking into account psychological theories of self-efficacy and for the resulting low construct validity. As an alternative, they presented a ten-item measure called Perceived Political Self-Efficacy (P-PSE) Scale. Based on social cognitive theory, it adopts a psychological understanding of self-efficacy and captures the phenomenon in a more systematic and complete manner than previous measures of internal efficacy. We translated the P-PSE scale to German and tested it in a German national quota sample, using quotas for age, gender and education (N = 1025). We provided evidence on the scale’s construct validity (by testing its correlations towards related constructs) and on its criterion validity (by regressing political participation propensity on the P-PSE score). The scale explained ΔR2 = 26% of people’s propensity for political participation over and above sociodemographic variables, and ΔR2 = 12% over and above previously existing measures, demonstrating its incremental value. We also tested cross-cultural measurement invariance towards an Italian sample, establishing configural, as well as partial metric and scalar invariance. In addition, we validated a four-item short version of the scale, which proved to be similarly valid as the full version. We argue, that these two measurement instruments provide a more adequate way of assessing internal political efficacy for research in German-speaking countries

Variability and Stability in Political Trust – A Latent State–Trait Analysis

Political trust has been investigated as (a) a stable disposition, and (b) a dynamic variable responsive to external events. As these perspectives lack a theoretical and methodological integration, we draw from personality research and adopt the traits-as-density-distribution-of-states (Fleeson, W. [2001]. Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80[6], 1011–1027) approach to conceptualize stability and variability in one theoretical framework. Further, we propose to use latent state–trait analysis (Steyer, R., & Schmitt, M. [1990]. The effects of aggregation across and within occasions on consistency, specificity and reliability. Methodika, 4, 58–94) to jointly estimate coefficients of stability and variability. We showcase the usefulness of this approach using German panel data (N = 2,083) across five years. Dispositional factors explained substantially more variance in political trust, than situational factors, revealing a ratio of roughly 3:1. We discuss how this ratio can serve as a comparative measure of stability for concepts of individual differences beyond political trust

Justice for the people? How justice sensitivity can foster and impair support for populist radical right parties and politicians in the US and in Germany

Many people argue that support for populist radical right political agents is motivated by people feeling “left behind” in globalized Western democracies. Empirical research supports this notion by showing that people who feel personally or collectively deprived are more likely to hold populist beliefs and anti-immigration attitudes. Our aim was to further investigate the psychological link between individuals’ justice concerns and their preferences for populist radical right political agents. We focused on stable individual differences in self-oriented and other-oriented justice concerns and argue that these should have opposing correlations with preferences for populist radical right parties. We tested our hypotheses in two national samples, one from the US (N = 1,500) and one from Germany (N = 848). Sensitivity to injustice towards oneself enhanced the likelihood of preferring Trump (USA) and AfD (Germany) via increased anti-immigration attitudes and increased populist attitudes. Sensitivity to injustice towards others reduced the likelihood of preferring Trump and AfD via decreased anti-immigration attitudes. We discuss our findings in regard to how stable individual differences in the evaluation of fairness can motivate intra- and interpersonal political conflicts in modern western societies, and, how politics and mass media can impact these conflicts

Mapping Political Trust and Involvement in the Personality Space – A Systematic Review and Analysis

Individual differences in political trust and involvement in politics have been linked to Big Five personality dispositions. However, inconsistent correlational patterns have been reported. As a systematic review is still missing, the present paper provides an overview of the current state of the empirical literature. A systematic review of 43 publications (N = 215,323 participants) confirmed substantial inconsistency in the correlational patterns and corroborated a suspicion that the frequent use of low-bandwidth personality short scales might be responsible, among other reasons. In a second step, we conducted two empirical studies (N1 = 988 and N2 = 795), estimating latent correlations between the Big Five and political trust and involvement at different hierarchical levels. We found that personality relations were consistent across different subdimensions of trust (e.g., trust in politicians, institutional trust) and involvement (e.g., political interest, political self-efficacy, participation propensity) and are therefore best estimated at aggregated levels (i.e., general political trust and involvement). Meanwhile, correlational patterns differed substantially between Big Five facets, confirming that previous inconsistencies can be partly attributed to a misbalanced representation of facets in Big Five short scales and indicating that associations should be estimated at lower levels of the personality hierarchy

Between active seekers and non-users: segments of science-related media usage in Switzerland and Germany

Citizens’ attitudes toward science are related to their use of science-related information from various sources. Evidence is scarce regarding citizens’ individual media repertoires for staying informed about science as segmentation studies so far have primarily focused on scientific attitudes. In this paper, we explore audience segments regarding their science-related information behavior and whether such segments are comparable or vary between two countries with similar information environments. Based on two surveys in Switzerland and Germany, we identify national audience segments that differ in their science-related information repertoires, and analyze their sociodemographic characteristics and science-related attitudes. In both countries, we find very comparable information user segments ranging from those who inform themselves frequently about science (“Active Seekers”/“Science Consumers”) to those who hardly get in contact with any information about science and research (“Non-Users”). Those segments which get in contact with information about science frequently show generally more positive attitudes

Between Active Seekers and Non-Users: Segments of Science-related Media Usage in Switzerland and Germany

<p>Citizens’ attitudes toward science are related to their use of science-related information from various sources. Evidence is scarce regarding citizens’ individual media repertoires for staying informed about science as segmentation studies so far have primarily focused on scientific attitudes. In this paper, we explore audience segments regarding their science-related information behavior and whether such segments are comparable or vary between two countries with similar information environments. Based on two surveys in Switzerland and Germany, we identify national audience segments that differ in their science-related information repertoires, and analyze their sociodemographic characteristics and science-related attitudes. In both countries, we find very comparable information user segments ranging from those who inform themselves frequently about science (“Active Seekers”/“Science Consumers”) to those who hardly get in contact with any information about science and research (“Non-Users”). Those segments which get in contact with information about science frequently show generally more positive attitudes.</p