New evidence on the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Weinschenk ◽  
Christopher T. Dawes ◽  
Christian Kandler ◽  
Edward Bell ◽  
Rainer Riemann

We investigate the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement using a new data set containing information on a large sample of young German twins. The TwinLife Study enables us to examine the predominant model of personality, the Big Five framework, as well as traits that fall outside the Big Five, such as cognitive ability, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of political engagement. Our results support previous work showing genetic overlap between some psychological traits and political engagement. More specifically, we find that cognitive ability and openness to experience are correlated with political engagement and that common genes can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and political engagement. Relationships between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement exist even at a fairly young age, which is an important finding given that previous work has relied heavily on older samples to study the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement.

Author(s):  
Danny Osborne ◽  
Nicole Satherley ◽  
Chris G. Sibley

Research since the 1990s reveals that openness to experience—a personality trait that captures interest in novelty, creativity, unconventionalism, and open-mindedness—correlates negatively with political conservatism. This chapter summarizes this vast literature by meta-analyzing 232 unique samples (N = 575,691) that examine the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and conservatism. The results reveal that the negative relationship between openness to experience and conservatism (r = −.145) is nearly twice as big as the next strongest correlation between personality and ideology (namely, conscientiousness and conservatism; r = .076). The associations between personality traits and conservatism were, however, substantively larger in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries than in non-WEIRD countries. The chapter concludes by reviewing recent longitudinal work demonstrating that openness to experience and conservatism are non-causally related. Collectively, the chapter shows that openness to experience is by far the strongest (negative) correlate of conservatism but that there is little evidence that this association is causal.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhasmina Tacheva ◽  
Anton Ivanov

BACKGROUND Opioid-related deaths constitute a problem of pandemic proportions in the United States, with no clear solution in sight. Although addressing addiction—the heart of this problem—ought to remain a priority for health practitioners, examining the community-level psychological factors with a known impact on health behaviors may provide valuable insights for attenuating this health crisis by curbing risky behaviors before they evolve into addiction. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study is twofold: to demonstrate the relationship between community-level psychological traits and fatal opioid overdose both theoretically and empirically, and to provide a blueprint for using social media data to glean these psychological factors in a real-time, reliable, and scalable manner. METHODS We collected annual panel data from Twitter for 2891 counties in the United States between 2014-2016 and used a novel data mining technique to obtain average county-level “Big Five” psychological trait scores. We then performed interval regression, using a control function to alleviate omitted variable bias, to empirically test the relationship between county-level psychological traits and the prevalence of fatal opioid overdoses in each county. RESULTS After controlling for a wide range of community-level biopsychosocial factors related to health outcomes, we found that three of the operationalizations of the five psychological traits examined at the community level in the study were significantly associated with fatal opioid overdoses: extraversion (β=.308, <i>P</i>&lt;.001), neuroticism (β=.248, <i>P</i>&lt;.001), and conscientiousness (β=.229, <i>P</i>&lt;.001). CONCLUSIONS Analyzing the psychological characteristics of a community can be a valuable tool in the local, state, and national fight against the opioid pandemic. Health providers and community health organizations can benefit from this research by evaluating the psychological profile of the communities they serve and assessing the projected risk of fatal opioid overdose based on the relationships our study predict when making decisions for the allocation of overdose-reversal medication and other vital resources.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1069-1087
Author(s):  
Arpana Rai ◽  
Upasna A. Agarwal

Workplace bullying is a common and constantly occurring phenomenon in organizations. Various factors render a workplace conducive to the occurrence of bullying-like features of the work environment and personality traits of the employees. While work environment features are well-established antecedents of workplace bullying, much of the research on personality traits as antecedents of bullying remains inconclusive. Drawing on the victim precipitation theory and the Big Five personality taxonomy, the present study aims to examine the relationship between four personality traits (conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion and openness to experience) and exposure to workplace bullying. We have excluded neuroticism, as it is a well-established antecedent of workplace bullying, whereas literature suggests mixed findings on the relationships between the remaining four personality traits and workplace bullying. A total of 835 full-time Indian managers working across different Indian organizations served as the sample for our study. The results suggest that conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion and openness to experience negatively correlate with workplace bullying. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed in this article.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-289
Author(s):  
María Vicent ◽  
Cándido J. Inglés ◽  
Ricardo Sanmartín ◽  
Carolina Gonzálvez ◽  
María del Pilar Aparicio-Flores ◽  
...  

This study analyses the relationship between the perfectionism dimensions, i.e. Self-Oriented Perfectionism-Critical (SOP-C) and Self-Oriented Perfectionism-Striving (SOP-S), and affect and the Big Five traits of personality in a sample of 804 Spanish students aged 8 to 11 (M  = 9.57; DE = 1.12). Student’s t test, Cohen’s d index and logistic regression analysis were used. The high SOP-C group scored significantly higher than their peers having low SOP-C on Negative Affect and Neuroticism, and lower on Positive Affect, Agreeableness, Consciousness and Openness to Experience. To the contrary, students with high SOP-S scored significantly higher on all adaptive dimensions (i.e. Positive Affect, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Consciousness and Openness to Experience), and lower on Negative Affect and Neuroticism. Effect sizes were small for most of statistically significant differences. These findings were also supported by regression analysis. Results are discussed in light of the debate on the adaptive or maladaptive nature of Self-Oriented Perfectionism.


Author(s):  
Brizeida R. Hernández-Sánchez ◽  
Jose C. Sánchez-García ◽  
Alexander Ward

Entrepreneurship as a research topic has been approached from different disciplines. After justifying the importance of its study, we define it as a process of discovery, assessment, and exploitation of opportunities. As part of this process, it also becomes important to study the person behind these actions. In fact, the personality approach is one of the most classic approaches in the study of entrepreneurship, albeit at same time one of the most controversial. This chapter summarizes relevant literature on personality traits and entrepreneurship, and differences are also established between broad traits (e.g., Big Five) and more specific traits (e.g., Opportunity Recognition or Locus of Control). Due to space constraints, this chapter does not do justice to all the existing developments that have analyzed the relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurship; however, it also includes a section dedicated to cognitive ability as a line of work that can complement the trait-based approach. The authors finalize this chapter with conclusions from the selected literature.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Angeles Peláez-Fernández ◽  
Natalio Extremera ◽  
Pablo Fernández-Berrocal

AbstractThe aim of this research was to explore the influence of Perceived Emotional Intelligence (PEI) on aggression dimensions (Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Hostility, and Anger) above and beyond the effects of gender, age, and personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience), as well as the moderating role of PEI on the relationship between personality and aggressive behavior, among young adults. The Trait Meta-Mood Scale, the Big-Five Inventory, and the Aggression Questionnaire were administered to a 313 Spanish community sample, comprised of both males (39.0%) and females (61.0%), ranging from 14 to 69 years old (X = 24.74; SD = 9.27). Controlling the effects of age, gender, and personality, PEI dimensions (Attention, Clarity and Repair) accounted for 3% of the variance (p < .05) in Verbal Aggression and Hostility. Interaction analysis showed that all PEI subscales moderated the relationship between four out of the Big-Five personality dimensions (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience) and the aggression dimensions. Particularly, the interaction between Attention and Extraversion and between Clarity and Neuroticism were significant predictors of Total Aggression (b = .67, t(313) = 2.35, p < .05; b = –.71, t(313) = –2.50, p < .05). The results show evidence of the predictive and incremental validity of PEI dimensions on aggressive behavior among young adults and of the moderating role of PEI on the personality-aggression relationship.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Ayoub ◽  
Samuel D. Gosling ◽  
Jeff Potter ◽  
Michael Shanahan ◽  
Brent W. Roberts

Studies have shown that cognitive ability is correlated with parental socioeconomic status (pSES). However, little is known about the correlation between personality and pSES. To better understand this relation, we conducted a meta-analysis of the correlations between pSES and personality traits and temperament dimensions. The correlations were generally very small with the exception of the correlation between pSES and openness to experience. Our results were replicated in a large ( N = 2,183,377) data set of self-reported personality scores collected online. Using this data set, we also examined the interaction between pSES and personality on attained education and socioeconomic status. We found evidence for the resource substitution hypothesis, which proposes that personality compensates for background disadvantage.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aalima Mumtaz Shah ◽  
Dr. Touseef Rizvi

The manner in which one acts or behaves in response to environment, person or stimulus that is external or internal, covert or overt and voluntary or involuntary is the behavior of an individual. Behavior is determined by his or her personality (is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms with the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influences his or her interactions with, and adaptation to, the intra psychic, physical ,and social environments). Personality is determined by various factors, these factors are examined by different researchers and psychologists, various models came out of it, Big Five-Factor Model (Costa & Mc Crae,1995 ) is one among them .An individual possessing specific traits behave specially in the society. Individuals moving towards people and society when they are in need are performing prosocial behavior (refers to acts that are positively valued by society).In our culture helping others is socially valued. Thus helpful responses are a form of prosocial behavior. Empirical work has been done to examine the relationship of prosocial behavior and personality traits. This paper presents the theoretical review of the relationship between prosocial behavior and Big Five-Factor Model of Personality, from last fifteen years.


Author(s):  
Paweł Piepiora ◽  
Damian Kwiatkowski ◽  
Justyna Bagińska ◽  
Dimitris Agouridas

Research on personality in sport is very popular as it allows prediction of the behavior of players in the starting situation. Hence, verifications of players due to their sports level may turn out to be crucial. Due to the dynamic development of American football in Poland, we undertook research to verify the relationship between the sports level and the personality of these players. The Big Five personality study that we carried out involved players aged from 20 to 29—the representatives of American football clubs in Poland (N = 140) from three league games levels: LFA 1 (n = 75), LFA 2 (n = 40), and LFA 9 (n = 25). The NEO-FFI personality questionnaire was used as a research tool. The players from the top-level games were characterized by their openness to experience, the level of which decreases along with the decrease in the players’ sports levels. The differences in openness to experience were revealed, first of all, in divergent thinking and creativity. It was ascertained that openness to experience is a characteristic personality trait for American football players in Poland. Therefore, systematic conduct of personality tests among American football players in Poland, in the process of selecting candidates for the highest levels of football competition, would be recommended. This might significantly affect the development of the sports level of this discipline in Poland. The obtained results of research on personality may, moreover, prove to be useful in selecting players and improving the predictions of important sports behaviors in American football in Poland.


2021 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Mohamed Shemeis ◽  
◽  
Talaat Asad ◽  
Samaa Attia ◽  
◽  
...  

This study has examined the direct effect of Big Five Factors of personality (BFF) which include (Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience) on Compulsive Buying (CB). Besides, examining the mediating effect of Consumer Negative Emotions (CNE) in the relationship between Big Five Factors of personality (BFF) and Compulsive Buying (CB). The questionnaire for the study was adapted from earlier established scales and measures which were based on five points Likert Scale. The study was concentrated on shopping malls’ customers in North Delta (Egypt). The study used a sample size of 384 and data was collected randomly using systematic random sampling. 314 questionnaires were valid for statistical analysis and free of missing data were retrieved with a response rate of 81.7%. Smart PLS-SEM3 software was used for data analysis. The results showed that there is a significant positive effect of Neuroticism on compulsive buying. While the results indicated that Extraversion has a significant negative effect on compulsive buying. Also, the results found that Conscientiousness has a significant negative effect on compulsive buying. While Agreeableness and Openness to Experience hadn’t had any effect on compulsive buying. As for the mediating effect of Consumer Negative Emotions, the results mentioned that Consumer Negative Emotions has a partial mediation in the relationship between Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, and Compulsive Buying. While Consumer Negative Emotions fully mediated the relationship between Openness to Experience and Compulsive Buying. But there was no mediation for Consumer Negative Emotions in the relationship between Agreeableness and Compulsive Buying.


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