Who Asked for Advice? Personality Traits and their Selection Effects on the Usage of the Wahl-O-Mat

“If you don’t ask, you’ll never know” is not only a famous saying, but also one that suits the general theme of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) perfectly. One thing, however, remains unclear: who is actually asking for advice? Personality traits can be used to approach this question in a way in which it hasn’t been before. They are some of the most reliable and commonly used forms of behavioural analysis in applied psychology. In political science, there has been some research on how personality psychology affects voting patterns, general political satisfaction levels, as well as how leading politicians are perceived. As we know so far, Voting Advice Application users tend to be young, well-educated males, but we don’t know anything about their personalities or how this affects their usage of VAAs. Are people with certain characteristics more likely to ask VAAs for advice? This paper seeks to examine the differences in personalities between those who used the Wahl-O-Mat, Germany’s most popular VAA with 15.6 million users in 2017, and those who did not. It will include an analysis of the effects of personality traits on the usage of the Wahl-O-Mat in general and, furthermore, one referring specifically to the 2017 Wahl-O-Mat for the German Federal Election. Certain correlations are expected, such as the similarities between people who assessed themselves as more conscientious and people who used the Wahl-O-Mat to educate themselves before the election, as opposed to those who didn’t. The data from about 1.300 participants, sampled to be representative of German internet users, was collected right after the German Federal Election. To research the psychological patterns of those participants the “Big Five personality traits” (OCEAN model) were introduced to the survey. Thus far, our analysis shows that there are significant differences between users and non-users. Furthermore, these differences have a notable effect on the usage of VAAs.