Personality traits and individual feeling of national pride in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Given the lack of studies on the relationship between personality and national pride, this study represents the first attempt to examine the impact of the Big Five personality traits on individual feeling of national pride in South Korea. The data for this study are obtained from the Korean General Social Survey (KGSS) of 2011 and 2012. The empirical evidence consistently shows that extraversion and agreeableness are significantly associated with individual feeling of national pride. Specifically, people who report elevated levels of extraversion and agreeableness are more likely to display a strong feeling of national pride. Contrary to theoretical expectations, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience are not associated with individual feeling of national pride. Overall, the findings lend some support to the view that personality traits exert a significant influence on individual feeling of national pride and suggest that except for contextual factors, psychological factors also offer some explanatory power for individual feeling of national pride.

KEYWORDS:

• Personality Traits
• Big Five
• National Pride
• KGSS
• South Korea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ching-Hsing Wang is a postdoctoral fellow in the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. His research interests are political behavior, public opinion, political psychology, political institutions, Asian politics and research methods. He has published articles in such scholarly journals as Electoral Studies, International Political Science Review, Party Politics, Social Science Quarterly and other journals.

Dennis Lu-Chung Weng is an assistant professor of political science at Sam Houston State University. His research interests are comparative politics, political behavior, quantitative methods and Asian politics. He has published articles in such scholarly journals as Asian Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Japanese Journal of Political Science, and other journals.

Notes

1 The World Values Surveys use the same survey question as the KGSS to gauge individual feeling of national pride, that is, ‘How proud are you to be [nationality corresponding to country]?.’ The respondents answer this question also using a 4-point scale ranging from ‘very proud’ to ‘not proud at all.’ Thus, it is compatible with the purpose of the present study to use the World Values Surveys to compare the levels of national pride around the world.

2 This figure is based on the data from KGSS, 2003–2012.