Politics and the General Factor of Personality

A General Factor of Personality (GFP) was extracted in two studies in order to examine its relationship with political variables. Only one of nine phenotypic associations between the GFP and variables measuring left–right political orientations was significant, which suggests that people who score highly on the GFP are not typically “left” or “right” in political orientation. However, respondents scoring highly on the GFP were somewhat more likely to take an interest in politics and tended to have higher levels of education, financial satisfaction and income. A heritability analysis conducted to determine whether the GFP and political variables share a common genetic influence produced heritability estimates of .49 (.29 to .58) and .43 (.23 to .51) for the GFP, but the lack of significant phenotypic correlations between the GFP and measures of left–right differences precluded a search for a common genetic factor.