Channels of participation: Political participant types and personality

This article employs a person-centred approach to test the relationship between personality traits and empirically defined political participant types. We argue that it is more appropriate to focus on types of participants to test the relationship between personality and political participation than...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPloS one Vol. 15; no. 10; p. e0240671
Main Authors Johann, David, Steinbrecher, Markus, Thomas, Kathrin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 29.10.2020
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Activists
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Cross-Sectional Studies
Elections
Female
Germany
Humans
International relations
Latent class analysis
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Middle Aged
Participation
Personality
Personality traits
Personality types
Political activism
Political aspects
Political behavior
Political participation
Politics
Psychological aspects
Public transportation
Respondents
Specialists
Surveys
Surveys and Questionnaires
Toolkits
Voting
Young Adult
Germany
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Summary:This article employs a person-centred approach to test the relationship between personality traits and empirically defined political participant types. We argue that it is more appropriate to focus on types of participants to test the relationship between personality and political participation than on individual modes or latent dimensions of political participation. Our reasoning is that the person-centred approach allows us to learn more about how and why citizens combine different modes of participation from a tool kit of available political activities to achieve a goal as a function of their personality. We rely on data collected by the German Longitudinal Election Study 2017 (GLES, ZA6801). On the basis of a set of survey questions enquiring on political activities that people take part in, Latent Class Analysis allows us to identify three political participant types (inactives, voting specialists, and complete activists). The 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10) measures respondents' personality traits. Our findings suggest that conscientious people are more likely to affiliate with the voting specialists and extroverts with the more active participant types in Germany.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0240671