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What Kind Of A Personality Should The Ideal Politician Have?
Franco Greco • October 27, 2020
With the US Election looming, I explore what makes voters prefer a certain type of politician? In particular the role of the personality.
Contemporary politics has shown that political elections and campaigning has become increasingly personalized over time, i.e., a party’s fortune more than ever before depend on its leading figures.
Politicians’ personality traits (refer to a previous blog article
where I outline different personality dimensions) have typically been studied via actual politicians’ self-assessments
or expert ratings or voters’ ratings or speech and statement analyses of leaders.
This body of research, conducted in different countries, unequivocally finds that politicians in office score on average higher than the normal population on the traits of extraversion and emotional stability but also on honesty-humility. However, the latter finding may carry socially desirable content and disagrees with voters’ perceptions that often suggest greater narcissism in politicians, i.e., being low on honesty-humility. On the other traits, such as openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness there is less agreement.
Recent Research
Recent
research examined the role of politicians’ personality traits as a useful cue for voters that can activate schematic knowledge about a politician’s political leanings and leadership styles.
More specifically, a candidate’s personality traits is used as a short-cut by voters to assess what candidates are going to do during their term in office (i.e., ideological leanings) and how they are going to do it (i.e., conduct in office).
The study examining German and Austrian elections and campaigning started with the assumption that a politician’s personality is a powerful anchoring cue and heuristic in that regard. Such a heuristic might become even more decisive in a world where candidates use personalized communication and campaigning through various social media channels. In doing so, candidates themselves serve as the faces of their parties, which allows and forces candidates to constantly create images of themselves. From such images, voters can infer the personality traits of candidates that are—in analogy to parties’ ideological leanings—relatively stable individual differences in behaviors that allow voters to extrapolate the what and how of politicians’ likely future behavior.
This leads us to develop two principles that guide voters’ preferences for personality traits in politicians.
First, we contend that voters expect politicians to be more capable or “better” than themselves on traits associated with leadership (the “desired leadership traits” principle).
Second, we contend that voters seek representation by candidates who exhibit personality congruence with their own personality (the “voter-politician congruence” principle). This is partly due to the sheer emotional liking of likeness that allows for identification with the candidate.
Key Findings Of The Recent Research
Study research results show that, when compared to the general population, voters want politicians to be more emotionally stable, extravert-assertive, more deliberate-conscientious and open, more honest, but also somewhat more disagreeable—many of the traits associated with leadership, political ambition, and higher media visibility.
Secondly, the study demonstrated that greater Social Dominance Orientation (an orientation to a tribe of social group maintaining its power) partly explains (mediates) a preference for politicians who score low on agreeableness. While greater Right Wing Authoritarianism (conventionalism, submission to authorities, and a desire to punish offenders and others that constitute a threat to law and order) partly explains a preference for politicians low on openness and high on conscientiousness.
Implications For The US Election (And Future Elections)
1) Ideology is still important
One could be tempted to conclude that political campaign content is taking a backseat as individual personalities are increasingly superseding parties as cues and targets in political elections. The study argues that, on the contrary, people’s vote choice is not necessarily becoming less political when voters shift from choosing between parties to choosing between candidates, since personality is not void of ideologically relevant content. As we have shown, ideological leanings shape preferences for politicians’ personalities.
2) Aspiration for the future is still important in leaders
Voters will demand certain traits from their leaders, who are expected to accomplish certain tasks and navigate the country into a stable and prosperous future.
3) Voters seek leaders who are similar and more capable them
Voters generally want to be represented by their politicians, i.e., seek similarity, but on traits that are conventionally associated with good leadership, they expect politicians to be more capable than themselves.
4) Desirability of a leader personality is mediated by voter similarity and voter ideology
Similarity on openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness is partially explained—and thus partially mediated—by ideological beliefs (SDO, RWA). This lends support to several theories arguing that our personality is an organizing system that translates into motivational goals or values, including SDO and RWA, which eventually guide ideological orientations and political behavior.
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