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Jeffrey J. Mondak
Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 2010 , 248pp. , $80/$25.99 ,
ISBN: 978-0521192934/978-0521140959
The idea that personality plays a role in political reasoning and decision making of ordinary citizens and politicians has a long pedigree. Scholars of public opinion and voter behavior widely ignored the role of personality traits for several decades, however. Only in recent years, have political scientists begun to rediscover personality traits as factors potentially shaping political reasoning and behavior of ordinary citizens. Jeffery Mondak is the first scholar to contribute a monograph to this discussion. In Personality and the Foundations of Political Behavior , he analyzes the role of personality in shaping public opinion and citizen behavior in the United States.
The book starts with a discussion of conceptual and theoretical issues. The author relies on the leading conceptualization in personality psychology, the Five-Factor Model of personality, thereby overcoming the jerry-built style of prior research in the field. In Chapter 2, Mondak thus reviews research on personality traits and introduces the Big Five approach. He spends some effort giving the reader a good understanding of the model as a whole and each of the five traits, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability. Moreover, the author reviews prior research on these traits and political attitudes and behavior. Therefore, the foundation is laid on firm conceptual and theoretical ground.
Building on this foundation, the empirical analysis utilizes data from three US-surveys that include measures of the Big Five. These measures, which are described in Chapter 3, differ considerably from the indicators utilized in psychology. In particular, the...