Are Personality Traits Related to Politicians’ Positions on Immigration?

ABSTRACTThe political debates spurred on by rapidly growing immigrant populations in many countries have resulted in an extensive, and growing, scholarship that seeks to explain citizens’ attitudes toward immigration. Yet, there is surprisingly an absence of research regarding the factors that correlate with political elites’ positions on immigration. This study therefore seeks to address an important scholarly gap by exploring the factors that help to explain politicians’ positions on immigration. Specifically, this study is inspired by the growing research into personality that underlines psychological traits as being important determinants for a wide variety of citizens’ sociopolitical attitudes, including attitudes towards immigration. Using data from the 2010 Swedish Candidate Survey, our findings highlight that candidates’ personality traits are related to their immigration attitudes. Specifically, extraversion and openness are shown to have positive relationships with attitudes towards immigrants. Furthermore, while the political context of the candidates can moderate some of the relationships between personality and attitudes toward immigration, our results show that personality traits are associated with immigration attitudes independent of political considerations.KEYWORDS: Immigrationpoliticiansattitudespersonality Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 To our knowledge, research on the relationship between the personality of political elites and policy preferences is limited to foreign policy (see Etheredge, Citation1978; Greenstein, Citation2009).2 The online survey was administered immediately after the national election in September 2010 to all candidates with an email address, obtained via the political parties and the Swedish National Election Program, of the seven parties with parliamentary representation, along with candidates from the Feminist Initiative and Sweden Democrats. The data collection and its management followed the guidelines for research ethics in place at the University of Gothenburg.3 Respondents were asked if they worked in the public sector, the private sector, were entrepreneurs, worked in another sector, or were not working.4 The results in Tables 3A and 4A in the Appendix do not show the interaction terms to be significant. Nevertheless, the literature recommends to interpret interactions by estimating predicted probabilities in order not to miss important moderating differences (Brambor et al., Citation2006; Franzese & Kam, Citation2009; Kingsley et al., Citation2017).5 The self-assessment paper survey was administered in the fall of 2010 to a random selection, based on the national tax agency register, of individuals listed as living in Sweden. The data collection and its management followed the guidelines for research ethics in place at the University of Gothenburg. For more information, please see: https://www.gu.se/en/som-institute/the-som-surveys.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMike MedeirosMike Medeiros is a research fellow at the Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on sociopolitical issues related to ethnicity, gender, elections and nationalism. E-mail: mike.medeiros@austin.utexas.eduPatrik ÖhbergPatrik Öhberg is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the SOM Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His areas of research include political representation, gender studies and environmental politics.Colin ScottColin Scott is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. His research focus on public opinion toward diversity issues, including immigration and minority accommodations, and the acculturation experiences of immigrants, refugees, and international students in Canada.