Openness as a Predictor of Political Orientation and Conventional and Unconventional Political Activism in Western and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This study provides a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between Openness and political orientation and activism in Europe. Analyses were conducted on the 4 waves of the European Social Survey, including large representative samples in up to 26 European countries (total N > 175,000). In line with previous studies, a robust, positive relationship between Openness and left-wing political orientation was obtained in Western Europe. However, in Eastern Europe, the relationship between Openness and political orientation was weaker, and reversed in 3 out of 4 waves. Moreover, Openness yielded significant positive relationships with unconventional activism and to a lesser degree with conventional activism. The magnitude of the relationship between Openness and activism was dependent on political orientation and region. Stronger associations between Openness and activism were found for those having a left-wing orientation in Western Europe, whereas in Eastern Europe, Openness was somewhat stronger related to activism for those having a right-wing orientation. In the discussion we elaborate on the role of the geopolitical context in the relationship between Openness and political variables.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by postdoctoral research grants of the National Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders awarded to Arne Roets, and of the Special Research Fund of Ghent University, awarded to Ilse Cornelis.

Ilse Cornelis is now at Thomas More College.

Notes

Data from Turkey and Israel were not included in this study, because their status as European countries is debatable.

Because with the original equation of Verkasalo et al. (2009), high scores represent low Openness, we reversed the signs within the equation. The intercept is accordingly set to 109.5331 to rescale to a mean of 100.

Age, years of education, and gender (all standardized) were included as demographic variables in the fixed effects model. Household income was not available for a number of countries in the ESS files, particularly for the 2006 wave. Analyzing the data while additionally adjusting for income, however, did not meaningfully change the results.

We also tested models including both a random country-level intercept as well as random slopes to allow between-country random effects on the slope of Openness. However, these random country-specific effects were not the main focus of our analyses and introducing random slopes failed to significantly change the fit of the model (–2 Log Likelihood) in the majority of our analyses. For reasons of conciseness, we therefore report the estimated fixed effects for the random intercept model only.