Personality, community, and politics: relating the five factor model to political behaviour in an African setting

Numerous studies demonstrate the impact of personality traits on political attitudes and behaviours, but these theories have not been tested in African contexts. Using a survey conducted in three indigenous languages of 1,516 respondents from northern Ghana, we demonstrate the salience of personality variables in predicting political attitudes and behaviours. These results are striking given the region's strong social hierarchies, low levels of education, and collectivist orientation. Our more stable personality measurements of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness are strong predictors of various political attitudes and behaviour in the expected directions. These relationships remain robust in the presence of demographic and linguistic controls. This paper points to a rich and underexplored avenue of political analysis across collectivist societies and provides tools to aid researchers in employing measures of abstract personality traits in contexts characterised by collectivism that speak non-European languages.