Do Personality Traits Predict Voter Attitudes When Politics Is Structured Around Conflict? Lessons from Israel

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Abstract
The relationship between personality traits and political attitudes has been studied extensively. However, existing accounts largely study personality’s links to liberal-conservative divisions on social and economic issues. We know far less about its attitudinal influences when politics is organized around other issue domains, particularly ethnonational conflicts. Addressing this gap, we examine the relationship between the Big Five personality traits, policy preferences, and political orientation in Israel, where the main ideological cleavage involves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Using original survey data, we find that the known relationships with social and economic attitudes operate only partly and more weakly in this context. Unlike these domains, conflict-related preferences in Israel correlate primarily with greater conscientiousness, largely through authoritarian tendencies. General Left-Right orientations mimic this relationship, reflecting conflict-related views rather than social or economic inclinations. These findings expand the scope of current debates about personality and political attitudes and underscore the importance of national ideological contexts for future research.
Funding Information
  • Israel Science Foundation (2315/18, 2976/21)

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