Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Justin Holmes

Keywords

Political psychology; Party affiliation--Psychological aspects;

Abstract

Personality has always played a big part in politics. It is one of the first things voters take into account when they decide which politician to cast their votes for. While personality may certainly play into what kind of person decides to run for a public office, what about the voters? If personality impacts when candidates decide whether or not to run for office, it could also be that personality influences whom voters decide should take office. Perhaps certain personality traits could even be used as a predictor for whether or not someone will vote for a certain politician or identify as a member of a certain partisan group. Many studies have already been conducted in this area of research, but the results are mixed. While most studies agree that the Big Five Personality test, a psychological test that accesses personality traits, is currently the most accurate personality test, there are disagreements over which traits concretely correlate with which political party. This study intends to find a more concrete connection between personality and partisanship. As of right now, there is little to no research on the connection between partisanship and personality, as most research focuses on connections between ideology and personality. What this study hopes to do is to provide further investigation as to whether personality shows connections with or predictions of partisanship. If connections are found, personality may be shown as a better indicator of partisanship and could provide uses in predicting how citizens vote or join political parties.

Year of Submission

2018

Department

Department of Political Science

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2018

Object Description

1 PDF file (44 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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