Personality Bases of Foreign Policy Postures: A Big five Aspects Approach

We explore how attitudes towards international issues are associated with basic dimensions of personality. We move beyond limited extant work in the area showing that (a) Big Five personality domains and component aspects are associated with multiple dimensions of attitudes towards international affairs, (b) that these effects are as or more important than more commonly studied demographic effects, and (c) that these effects are independent of more general personality-ideology associations (i.e., robust when controlling for general measures of liberal-conservative ideology). Our aspect-level approach provides nuance to extant domain-level findings and helps characterise the psychological bases of international postures. Our findings suggest that personality domains, and more specifically, aspects, play a significant role in shaping political orientation towards the world. The nature of the international dimensions of ideology is more nuanced than previous scholarship suggests, in particular when we explore them through the lenses of personality psychology.