IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwsop/diw_sp1150.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Personality for Gender Gaps in Political Interest and Activity

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Ayaita

Abstract

Women have been found to be, on average, less interested in politics and less politically active than men, which might reduce the representation of women’s interests in a democracy. In order to enhance the understanding of these gender gaps, this preregistered study analyzes the role of personality differences for gender gaps in political interest and activity.I use a large representative sample of the adult population in Germany for the analysis. First, I replicate the findings that women tend to have lower scores in political interest and activity and that these gaps are not fully explained by demographic, situational, and structural factors. Second, I find that the remaining gender gaps in political interest and activity are, overall, not significantly explained by gender differences in personality. However, gender differences in some specific personality traits partially explain the political gender gaps: Women’s higher average agreeableness contributes to the gender gap in political interest, and women’s higher average conscientiousness contributes to the gender gap in political activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Ayaita, 2021. "The Role of Personality for Gender Gaps in Political Interest and Activity," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1150, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
  • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1150
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.828070.de/diw_sp1150.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mondak, Jeffery J. & Hibbing, Matthew V. & Canache, Damarys & Seligson, Mitchell A. & Anderson, Mary R., 2010. "Personality and Civic Engagement: An Integrative Framework for the Study of Trait Effects on Political Behavior," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(1), pages 85-110, February.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    3. Preece, Jessica & Stoddard, Olga, 2015. "Why women don’t run: Experimental evidence on gender differences in political competition aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 296-308.
    4. Mondak, Jeffery J & Halperin, Karen D, 2008. "A Framework for the Study of Personality and Political Behaviour," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 335-362, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aaron Weinschenk, 2013. "’Cause You’ve Got Personality," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(4), pages 21582440135, October.
    2. Anne Bäro & Felix Toepler & Timo Meynhardt & Vivek K. Velamuri, 2022. "Participating in the sharing economy: The role of individual characteristics," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3715-3735, December.
    3. K Amber Curtis & Steven V Miller, 2021. "A (supra)nationalist personality? The Big Five’s effects on political-territorial identification," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(2), pages 202-226, June.
    4. Dimick, Matthew & Stegmueller, Daniel, 2015. "The Political Economy of Risk and Ideology," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 237, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    5. repec:eur:ejserj:521 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Aidt, T. S. & Rauh, C., 2017. "The Big Five personality traits and partisanship in England," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1745, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    7. Victor G. Hugg & Kelly LeRoux, 2019. "Personality traits as predictors of citizen engagement with local government," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(2).
    8. Hollibaugh, Gary E. & Klingler, Jonathan & Ramey, Adam, 2015. "Don't Know What You Got: A Bayesian Hierarchical Model of Neuroticism and Nonresponse," IAST Working Papers 15-27, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    9. David Johann & Markus Steinbrecher & Kathrin Thomas, 2020. "Channels of participation: Political participant types and personality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-13, October.
    10. Julie Hassing Nielsen, 2016. "Personality and Euroscepticism: The Impact of Personality on Attitudes Towards the EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(5), pages 1175-1198, September.
    11. K Amber Curtis, 2016. "Personality’s effect on European identification," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(3), pages 429-456, September.
    12. Nathan Barrymore & Cristian L. Dezső & Benjamin C. King, 2022. "Gender and competitiveness when earning for others: Experimental evidence and implications for sponsorship," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(5), pages 905-934, May.
    13. Jirjahn, Uwe & Chadi, Cornelia, 2016. "Risk Attitude and Nonmarital Birth," IZA Discussion Papers 10316, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Heineck, Guido & Süssmuth, Bernd, 2013. "A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 789-803.
    15. Falk, Armin & Abeler, Johannes & Kosse, Fabian, 2021. "Malleability of preferences for honesty," CEPR Discussion Papers 16164, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    17. Cardak, Buly A. & Martin, Vance L., 2023. "Household willingness to take financial risk: Stockmarket movements and life‐cycle effects," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    18. Collewet, Marion & Fairley, Kim & Kessels, Roselinde & Knoef, Marike & van Vliet, Olaf, 2024. "The design of welfare: unraveling taxpayers' preferences," OSF Preprints 4am7e, Center for Open Science.
    19. Dreber, Anna & Heikensten, Emma & Säve-Söderbergh, Jenny, 2022. "Why do women ask for less?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    20. Peter Huber & Klaus Nowotny, 2018. "Risk Aversion and the Willingness to Migrate in 30 Countries," WIFO Working Papers 569, WIFO.
    21. Ranganathan, Kavitha & Lejarraga, Tomás, 2021. "Elicitation of risk preferences through satisficing," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender; personality; political activity; political engagement; political interest; politics;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1150. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sodiwde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.