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

Abstract

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.