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Studies combining psychology and political science have shown that personality traits such as extroversion and openness to experiences are conditioning factors of political activism. However, the mechanisms through which this effect occurs are still poorly understood. Aiming to advance this topic, this article presents the results of an investigation that looked to analyse the mediated effects of personality traits in the Brazilian context, taking as mediating conditioning factors various attitudes and subjective dispositions commonly found in the literature, such as interest in politics and subjective political efficacy. Using the Latin American Public Opinion Project data, the hypothesis was tested that personality influences behaviour, since it favours the development of a number of attitudes that function as basic factors conditioning civic engagement. The results indicate the significant mediated effects of extroversion and openness to experience, especially with regard to political knowledge.
Keywords: Personality; political participation; protest; civic skills; mediated effects.
Although the first generation of studies on political participation focused its attention on electoral modalities such as voting and party engagement, new forms of activism became absorbed into research agendas after the 1960s, particularly those studies linked to protests (NORRIS, 2007). Part of the literature concerned with these new forms of political citizenship has sought to identify their conditioning factors at a macrosocial level (DALTON and ROHRSCHNEIDER, 2002; TARROW, 1998), associated with the political and economic structure of countries and global regions, but also the factors at a micro level (VERBA, SCHLOZMAN and BRADY, 1995), such as material resources (income) and cognitive resources (schooling, knowledge of politics). Focusing attention on this dimension of individual conditions, the present article discusses a component still seldom explored by political scientists: personality.
Some researchers investigating the psychology of individual differences have argued that personal traits should be considered when explaining participatory political behaviour (MONDAK, 2010). However, this provocation has generated few responses from Political Science and there have thus far been few attempts to empirically test the relations between personality traits and different forms of political engagement. Some pioneering initiatives in the area should be highlighted, such as the work of Mussen and Wyszynski (1952), who back in the 1950s had observed that less participatory individuals had a tendency towards passivity, inflexible thinking and submissiveness towards authority, and Sniderman...