Personality and affective polarization

There are increasing concerns about the presence of affective polarization between political groups in the US and elsewhere. Most work on affective polarization and political identity strength focuses on a combination of overlapping social group identities and a polarized political context. While these are important reasons for affective polarization, we argue that some individuals are also innately more likely to be strong identifiers and to become affectively polarized around any particular political identity. We suggest that those intrinsic differences are associated with core personality traits drawn from the Big Five and the Dark Triad. In particular, we argue that narcissism, neuroticism, extraversion and openness relate to political identity strength and narcissism and agreeableness relate to in- and out-group prejudice. We test this in Britain using original survey data, examining both long-standing party identities and new Brexit identities. Our findings demonstrate that people with certain personality traits are more likely to hold stronger and more emotionally resonant identities and, in most cases, these effects are common to both sides of the divide. This indicates that heightened elite-led polarization does not affect everyone equally in terms of creating mass affective polarization.