What Makes the Political Personal? Openness,
Personal Political Salience, and Activism
Nicola Curtin,1 Abigail J. Stewart,1 and Lauren E. Duncan2
1
University of Michigan
2
Smith College
ABSTRACT People who attach personal meaning to social and political events or are high in Personal Political Salience (PPS) are more likely
to engage in political activism (Duncan & Stewart, 2007). Although research suggests that PPS is consequential for activism, we know little
about its origins or, more generally, about indirect effects of personality
on activism. In this study we examined the possibility that the personality
trait of Openness to Experience may be one source of PPS and an indirect
predictor of activism. In addition, we proposed that Openness would also
be directly related to political activism in young adults but not in middleaged and older adults. Analyses confirmed these predictions in crosssectional and over-time data from six samples. We argue that Openness
may predispose some individuals both to find personal meaning in distant
political events and to engage in social activism in their youth.
Since the sweeping social change and unprecedented student activism of
the 1960s and 1970s, researchers have been investigating why people
engage in movements for social change. Much of the early research on
personality and activism focused on how parenting styles and moral
reasoning predicted activist engagement (Block, Haan, & Smith, 1969;
Haan, Smith, & Block, 1968) or examined power and narcissistic
motivations, as well as the absence of leavening motives like affiliation
We gratefully acknowledge Alyssa N. Zucker’s generosity in allowing us access to the
University of Michigan Alumnae data used in this study. We would also like to thank
David G. Winter, the Gender and Personality in Context laboratory, our anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments on drafts of the manuscript and Laura Klem for
her invaluable statistical advice.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nicola Curtin, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. E-mail:
[email protected].
Journal of Personality 78:3, June 2010
r 2010, Copyright the Authors
Journal compilation r 2010, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00638.x
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in activists (Lichter & Rothman, 1982; McAdams, Rothman & Lichter,
1982; Rothman, 1984). More recent research has examined authoritarianism and generativity as personality predictors of political involvement (Peterson, Smirles, & Wentworth, 1997). Some researchers have
been more interested in personality outcomes of activism, as opposed to
antecedents (e.g., Braungart & Braungart, 1990, 1991; Fendrich & Lovoy, 1988; Franz & McClelland, 1994; Fendrich, 1977). The current
study examines personality antecedents to political activism for social
change. In particular, we focus on the basic trait of Openness to Experience and how it predicts the individual tendency to attach personal
meaning to large-scale sociopolitical events (PPS), which has been
demonstrated to predict activism (Duncan & Stewart, 2007). We argue
that both basic personality traits and more proximal dispositional tendencies matter in understanding and predicting social engagement.
Predicting Political Activism for Social Change
Much of the sociological research on activism has examined involvement in organized social movements (e.g., Klandermans 1984, 1993;
Klandermans & Oegema, 1987; McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Sherkat &
Blocker, 1994), that is, relatively large-scale actions organized around
a particular social issue such as civil rights. The recent social psychological literature, borrowing from the sociological tradition (e.g.,
Stürmer & Simon, 2004b; Stürmer, Simon, Loewy, & Jörger, 2003),
often focuses on participation in a particular organization that addresses a social issue such as gay rights (this organization may or may
not be part of a larger social movement). And much of the literature
in political science focuses on political or civic engagement, such as
voting or participation in local politics (e.g., Beck & Jennings, 1982;
Verba, Burns, & Schlozman, 1997; Verba, Schlozman, & Burns,
2004). Our consideration of activism encompasses all of these foci.
For example, we asked about engagement around specific social issues (such as homelessness). Some of these engagements included
being a member of a particular organization (which may have been
affiliated with a larger social movement) or contacting a local official
about an issue of concern or attending a large social demonstration
or rally. Our conceptualization of activism, then, is any behavior
undertaken with the intention of creating some kind of social improvement (defined by the actor, not us). We focus on left-leaning
activism but do not assume that only left-leaning activism is aimed at
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social change (for example, prolife activism aims to change both social norms and laws around access to abortion). However, because
Openness to Experience predicts liberal social attitudes (Carney, Jost,
Gosling, & Potter, 2008; Van Hiel, Kossowska, & Mervielde, 2000;
Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2004) it seems most logical that a first step in
examining its role in engagement should focus on activism associated
with left-leaning attitudes.
There has been little or no research examining the role of relevant
broad personality traits like ‘‘the Big Five’’ as predictors of political
activism. According to McAdams and Pals (2006, p. 207), these broad
traits provide consistency and predictability to an individual’s behaviors across a range of situations. In contrast to these broad traits, they
argue, there is a ‘‘wide range of motivational, social-cognitive, and
developmental adaptations, contextualized in time, place, and/or social
role’’ (p. 208). They point out that ‘‘characteristic adaptations are typically more specific and malleable than are dispositional traits and that
traits likely exert some influence on the development of some characteristic adaptations’’ (p. 209). We propose, consistent with this model,
that Openness to Experience is a broad personality trait that may indeed foster the development of the more narrowly contextualized personality disposition of PPS, or the individual tendency to attach
personal meaning to social and political events. Our intention is not
to understate the importance of structural-level explanations of engagement (such as experiences of discrimination) or the importance of
social-psychological theories focusing on identity but rather to expand
our knowledge of individual-level differences that might also have important implications for understanding who becomes engaged, thereby
showing that personality matters for social activism.
Although broad personality traits like Openness to Experience
have not been examined as sources of political activism or engagement, other more contextualized ‘‘characteristic adaptations,’’ such
as social and group identity, have been extensively studied (Gurin,
1985; Gurin & Crosby, 1987; Gurin, Miller, & Gurin, 1980). Stürmer
and colleagues (Stürmer & Simon, 2004a, 2004b; Stürmer et al. 2003)
proposed a dual pathway model of collective action, which includes
both individual analyses of the costs and benefits associated with
engagement (see Klandermans, 1984, 1993) and collective identification in predicting activist engagement. In a series of studies,
Stürmer and Simon (2004a) found that collective identification
with one’s group was related to involvement in collective action on
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behalf of that group for gay men, older adults, and people involved
with the fat acceptance movement.
Related research in personality psychology has found similar relationships between these politicized collective identities and activist
engagements, but this research suggests that collective identities may
predict a broader pattern of active political behavior (e.g., Cole &
Stewart, 1996; Cole, Zucker, & Ostrove, 1998; Duncan, 1999; Duncan & Stewart, 2007). Cole and Stewart examined the relationship
between midlife political participation, politicized identity, and student activism in a sample of Black and White women who graduated
from college in the late 1960s. They found that both politicized
identities and previous activist engagement predicted broadly defined political participation (similar to our definition here) in midlife.
These findings complicate the pathway model that suggests that
collective identities precede involvement. Although collective identifications certainly may often precede initial involvement in activism,
it is also possible that early experiences with political engagement
engender collective identifications, which, in turn, contribute to future engagement in the political sphere more generally. Alternatively,
some studies (Braungart & Braungart, 1991; Cole & Stewart, 1996;
Stewart, Settles, & Winter, 1998) have found support for increased
feminist consciousness in women following their political engagement
in a variety of different causes, even when those causes are not related
to their own gender identification. There is, then, reason to suspect
that political activism may have sources in areas not yet examined.
In this study we examined two personality antecedents of political
activism. We recognize that politicized identities and collective identification certainly play a role in political activism, but our focus here
is on a broad personality trait (openness) and a more narrowly focused trait or ‘‘characteristic adaptation’’ (PPS) as antecedents to
activism. For this reason, we defined activism broadly as behavior
individuals engage in that is intended to create social or political
change, including both individual and collective strategies, and not
necessarily on behalf of one’s own group.
Personal Political Salience
Personality traits that assess an individual’s cognitive and emotional
investment in the political sphere should predict the tendency to take
political action. One such dispositional trait is the tendency to attach
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personal meaning to social and political events. Stewart and Healy
(1986, 1989) argued that some individuals possess a stronger dispositional propensity to find relatively distant events (including those
that may not directly affect them) meaningful. This disposition might
also be related to the disposition to identify with particular groups,
but it is quite distinct from it. Meaning is attached to political and
social events, not groups, and the meaning might include identification, but could also include strong emotion, strong opinion, or expression of values, among other things. Even as Stewart and Healy
emphasized the role of individual developmental stage and generation or cohort in shaping the impact of historical events on people,
they also noted that there are individual differences in the degree to
which any social and historical events are salient and personally
meaningful to individuals (see, e.g., Stewart & Healy, 1989, p. 33).
It is important to note that personally meaningful events do not
necessarily have to be those by which one is directly affected or even
those one has directly experienced. For example, one might consider
the Kennedy assassination to be personally meaningful, even if one
was not alive when it occurred, or consider the war in Iraq to be
personally meaningful, even if one has no direct relation to the war.
Duncan (2005) found that this tendency is unrelated to political
knowledge or expertise. Therefore, it is not that people who are high
on PPS know more political events; it is that they seem to care more
about them and to find them more personally relevant.
Duncan and Stewart (2007) showed that dispositional PPS was
significantly related to political participation and politicized gender
and racial identities. Across four different samples they found that
PPS and activism were directly, as well as indirectly, related. Because
PPS reflects the attachment of personal meaning to the domain of
the social and political, it is intuitively plausible that it would relate
to taking political actions or being engaged in the political domain.
However, this particular individual difference is understudied in
models of social activism, and we have little understanding of what
kinds of broader personality traits might underlie the tendency to
personalize sociopolitical events themselves.
Openness to Experience
Individuals high in Openness to Experience are willing to shift their
attitudes and beliefs when presented with new information or
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experiences (Digman, 1990) and are adept at divergent thinking
(McCrae, 1987). These individuals generally prefer new, exciting, and
intense experiences as opposed to those that are familiar or traditional in
nature, enjoy engaging in abstract thought and philosophizing (McCrae,
1996; McCrae & Costa, 1997), and value imagination and nonconformity (Dollinger, Leong, & Ulicni, 1996). Moreover, there is evidence
that Openness to Experience helps to shape broad approaches to the
sociopolitical world. McCrae (1996) has argued that openness has an
important role in understanding social and political attitudes and personalities. He suggested that openness affects how people understand
the world and process information, which, in turn, affects values and
social interactions. In fact, he asserted that ‘‘traits in the domain of
openness have powerful and pervasive influences. These effects can be
seen in cultural change, political affiliations, . . . a[n] . . . aspect of openness that has been relatively neglected in its conceptualization’’ (p. 325).
Research in both North America and Europe has shown that
people high in openness are less conservative (Van Hiel & Mervielde,
2004; Van Hiel et al., 2000) and tend to be more left-wing in their
political orientation (Thorisdottir, Jost, Liviatan, & Shrout, 2007)
than their less-open counterparts. In their meta-analysis of 88 samples (across 12 countries) Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway
(2003b) found that Openness to Experience was negatively correlated with political conservatism and authoritarian attitudes. In four
studies, Carney et al. (2008) consistently found positive relationships
between Openness to Experience and liberal political orientation.
Riemann, Grubich, Hempel, and Mergl (1993) found that Openness
to Experience was negatively related to conservatism and punitive
authoritarian attitudes and positively related to support for social
welfare and women’s equality. Flynn (2005) found that openness was
related to fewer prejudicial race attitudes, and Ekehammar and Akrami (2003, 2007) similarly found that Openness to Experience was
negatively correlated with general prejudice.
It seems plausible that openness could be related to the tendency
to link the political and social or to personalize the political (i.e., to
PPS). If openness is implicated in how people see and make sense of
the social world, perhaps those high in this trait examine the sociopolitical world more closely and feel more personally affected by it.
Further, personal engagement with the political sphere (PPS) may be
an outlet for the search for new and intense experiences and the interest in abstract thought that characterize openness. For example,
Openness and Activism
949
people high in openness may be more likely than their counterparts to
personalize events because the process of personalizing political and
social events may intensify their meaning and hence the ‘‘experience’’
of them; it may allow people high in openness vicariously to experience novel and powerful events (McCrae, 1996). It might also allow
vicarious exposure to new outlooks or understandings about the
world, opportunities that people high in openness also tend to seek.
Finally, given the relationship between left-leaning attitudes and
Openness to Experience, it seems important to consider this basic
personality trait when examining activism for social change, particularly because, as Carney and colleagues (2008) argued, one defining
characteristic of liberal leaning individuals is a preference for social
change. Given that openness underlies this particular preference,
it seems a likely candidate as a distal predictor of left-leaning
engagement for social change.
Developmental Considerations
In their review of the literature on civic engagement, Stewart and
McDermott (2004) argued that development across the life span has
important implications for understanding activist engagements. For
example, research has shown that individuals who engage in activism
as young adults are more likely to be activists in their middle age
(Braungart & Braungart, 1991; Cole & Stewart, 1996; Fendrich,
1977). Additionally, important events experienced across the life span
may affect how people think about, react to, and act on their world.
PPS and activism are both associated with significant life events.
Zucker (1999) and Stewart and Gold-Steinberg (1996) found that
adult reproductive experiences were related to increased political
consciousness and political activism in women. Fahs (2007) found
that divorced women were more likely to consider political movements of the 1960s to be personally significant and were more likely
to be involved with politically oriented community organizations
after their divorces compared to their still-married counterparts.
These results suggest that important adult life experiences have
marked effects on the personal significance one retrospectively attributes to social events and activist involvements. Because these life
events are acquired with age, these findings argue for a developmental approach to thinking about pathways to activism. Across the
life span, different contextual factors may shape both dispositional
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tendencies such as PPS and behaviors such as activism; it is therefore
also possible that the relationships between openness, PPS, and activism may look somewhat different in middle-aged and older adults
then they do in young adults.
In middle and later age we expect that PPS and the kinds of life
events discussed above, including youthful activism, play a more important role in determining activism, whereas basic personality characteristics like openness will not have the same direct impact that they
might have in young adulthood. That is, life experiences are expected
to drown out the direct effects of personality in older adults. For young
adults, who have generally had fewer significant life experiences than
their middle-aged counterparts and are still exploring their identities
(Erikson, 1968), broad traits such as openness may more directly motivate exploration of a new realm, like activist engagement. Because
young adults high on openness are motivated to expose themselves to
new people and activities, we anticipate that they will show both increased dispositional tendencies to attach meaning to social and political events and to engage in political action for social change. We
suggest that there may be a direct relationship between openness and
activism in young adults not found in middle age.
Our central hypothesis is that openness will significantly, though indirectly, affect activism via its positive relationship with PPS. Therefore,
we hypothesized that (1) openness would be positively and significantly
related to PPS, (2) PPS would be positively and significantly related to
activism (both hypotheses were tested in both Studies 1 and 2). Because
we had one sample with data at two time points, we also hypothesized
that these relationships would remain significant in across-time analyses
(tested in Study 1). Given the developmental issues outlined above, we
hypothesized (3) that openness would exert indirect effects (mediated by
PPS) in older adults (tested in Study 1) and would only directly predict
activism (after controlling for PPS) in young adults (tested in Study 2).
Figure 1 shows the expected relationships between our variables of interest. We tested our hypotheses using participants from six samples
drawn from two age groups: middle-aged adults and young adults.
Method
Participants and Procedures for Study 1: Middle-Aged Adults
Radcliffe College class of 1964. In 2005, 233 women from the Radcliffe
class of 1964 were asked to participate in a follow-up to an ongoing
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Openness
a
PPS
b
c'
Activism
Figure 1
Proposed model of relationships between Openness to Experience,
PPS, and activism. Although only the c 0 path (indirect effect) between
openness and activism is depicted in the figure, a direct path between openness and activism (a c path; not shown) is predicted for
the undergraduate and young-adult samples only. The c 0 path shown
is predicted for the middle-aged and older adults.
longitudinal study (for a description of earlier studies using this data set,
see Stewart, 1978; Stewart & Ostrove, 1993; Welsh & Stewart, 1995).
Participants completed a series of both open- and closed-ended questionnaires including measures of PPS and current social, political, and community involvement. We included 105 women from this wave of data
collection in the present analyses because they had complete data on at
least one of the measures of interest. The sample was predominantly
White, heterosexual, and middle- to upper-middle-class, with a mean age
of 62 years (range 61–64 years old).
Smith College class of 1964. Also in 2005, 290 women from the Smith
class of 1964 were contacted in a follow-up to a previous data collection
conducted in the mid-1990s (for a description of procedures and sampling
from this first wave of data collection, see Duncan, 1999; Duncan, Wentworth, Owen-Smith, & LaFavor, 2002). Participants completed a series of
both open- and closed-ended questions, similar to those completed by the
Radcliffe sample. The current analysis includes data collected in both
1995 and 2005. We included data from the 1995 wave to enable acrosstime analyses. However, only the 2005 data were included in the crosssectional analyses; 198 women for whom we had complete data on at least
one of the measures of interest were included in this analysis. One hundred twenty-eight women were included in the across-time analyses. The
sample was predominantly White, heterosexual, and middle- to uppermiddle-class, with a mean age of 62.48 years (range 61–64 years old) in
2005 (in 1995, these women were in their 50s).
University of Michigan alumnae (middle-aged and older adult
cohorts). In 1995–1996 data were collected from female graduates of
the University of Michigan from three cohorts (1952, 1972, and 1992; for
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Curtin, Stewart, & Duncan
sampling procedures, see Zucker, 2004; Zucker & Stewart, 2007). These
women completed a series of both open- and closed-ended questionnaires
assessing political and social opinions, including PPS and political and social engagement. Two-hundred and forty-three women were included in the
study, who were predominantly White, heterosexual, and middle-class. The
women were divided into two age cohorts: 144 women in their mid-40s at
the time of data collection (M 5 45.94 years old, ranging in age from 44 to
50 years old) and 99 women who were in their mid-60s during data collection (M 5 66.31 years old, ranging in age from 65 to 70 years old). Throughout the rest of the paper, these participants will be referred to as the
‘‘Michigan middle-aged’’ and ‘‘Michigan older adult’’ cohorts, respectively.
Participants and Procedures for Study 2: Young Adults
University of Michigan alumnae (young-adult cohort). Ninety women
from the University of Michigan class of 1992, for whom we had complete
data on at least one of the variables of interest, were included in Study 2.
The sample was predominantly White, heterosexual, and middle-class;
the women were in their 20s at the time of data collection (M 5 26.38,
ranging in age from 23 to 30 years old). Throughout the rest of the paper,
this sample will be referred to as the ‘‘young-adult cohort.’’
Undergraduate cohort. In the fall of 2007, 132 undergraduates in the introductory psychology course of a large public university in the Midwest
participated in an on-line study assessing their personality and political
beliefs and behaviors. One-hundred and nineteen of the participants for
whom we had complete data on at least one of the measures of interest
were included in the current analysis. This was a mixed-gender sample
(67% female); the majority of participants were White (62%), with 27%
identifying as Asian American/Asian Pacific Islander or South Asian, 5%
as African American/Black, 1% as Latino/a, and 3% as mixed race; the
average participant age was 19 years (range 18–32 years old).
Measures in Study 1 and Study 2
Personal political salience. The degree to which participants personalize
social and political events was assessed using two versions of Duncan and
Stewart’s (2007) scale. This measure asks participants to rate the personal
meaningfulness of a list of political and social events on a 3-point scale
(1 5 not at all personally meaningful, 2 5 a little personally meaningful,
3 5 very personally meaningful). The PPS 1 scale, used with all samples
except the undergraduate sample, included the following events: The
Great Depression, World War II, Hiroshima, McCarthyism, the Vietnam
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War, the Kennedy Assassination, the civil rights movement, and the
women’s movement. Scores were computed by summing scores on the
eight events and calculating a total mean (as ranged from .72 to .78).
The version used with the undergraduate sample (a 5 .71), the PPS 2,
included the following eight items: the Vietnam War, the civil rights
movement, the women’s movement, AIDS, globalization, the lesbian/gay
rights movement, the Persian Gulf War, and the Clinton presidency. We
used three common and five different items for the youngest sample (the
undergraduate sample) because we suspected that the kinds of events they
would find important might be different from those of young adults sampled over 10 years ago and middle-aged adults.
Openness to Experience. Openness to experience was measured using the
Big Five Inventory (BFI) and a Feeling Based Openness Questionnaire
(FBOQ), a proxy measure of openness, developed for the current analyses. The BFI is a 44-item scale developed as a brief way to measure the
five dimensions of the Five Factor Model (Benet-Martı́nez & John, 1998).
This scale asks participants to indicate how much they agree with the
extent to which a statement represents them on a 5-point scale (1 5 disagree strongly; 5 5 agree strongly). These descriptions reflect prototypical
examples of a particular Big Five trait. For example, ‘‘I see myself as
someone who likes to reflect, play with ideas’’ would be an example of an
item measuring openness. The BFI was used to assess openness in the the
Radcliffe sample (a 5 .81), the Smith 1995 (a 5 .80) and 2005 (a 5 .85)
samples, and the undergraduate sample (a 5 .81) by computing a mean
score for the openness scale.
Because we did not have a traditional measure of Openness to Experience in the University of Michigan Alumnae samples (i.e., the Michigan
middle-aged, Michigan older adult, and the young-adult cohorts), we developed a proxy measure for the purpose of the current studies, the FBOQ,
using items from the Feelings about Life questionnaire (Helson & Moane,
1987). The Feelings about Life questionnaire uses items derived from theories on adult development (Helson & Moane, 1987) and assesses individuals’ feelings about a variety of life experiences. Stewart and colleagues
have added items to the original 40 developed by Helson and have used the
measure to assess constructs such as identity certainty and generativity (see
Zucker, Ostrove, & Stewart, 2002). Participants rated how true a series of
statements about their lives were on a scale from 1 (not at all descriptive) to
3 (very descriptive). Participants rated each item in terms of their life experiences at different ages. The same 48 items were administered to the
Radcliffe and the Smith samples in 2005. The University of Michigan
samples were asked to respond to the same 48 items plus an additional 21,
for a total of 69 items. Each cohort in the University of Michigan sample
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rated three time periods: ‘‘in my 20s,’’ ‘‘in my 40s,’’ and ‘‘in my 60s.’’
Hence, all the women rated feelings for their own age, in addition to providing retrospective and or prospective assessments or both.
Because we had data from this questionnaire in three samples (Radcliffe, Smith, and the UM Alumnae), we initially developed the measure
using data from the Radcliffe sample by first correlating items from the
Feelings about Life questionnaire (asking about their current feelings, i.e.,
‘‘in my 60s’’) with the BFI openness subscale. Based on these initial correlations, five items emerged as both significantly correlated with the BFI
openness subscale and as having face validity: (1) feeling an intense interest
in my inner life, (2) discovering new parts of myself, (3) feeling I understand
how the world and other people work, (4) appreciating my complexity, and
(5) realizing the larger picture. These items had acceptable reliability in the
Radcliffe sample (a 5 .75) and, as a scale, correlated substantially and significantly with the BFI openness subscale (r 5 .56, po.001). Once we had
developed the FBOQ, we cross-validated the measure in the Smith sample,
using data collected in 2005 (and, again, using only participants’ responses
indicating current feelings). Scale reliability was again acceptable (a 5 .69),
and the scale correlated well with the BFI openness subscale (r 5 .48,
po.001).
Having developed and validated the measure using the Smith and Radcliffe samples, we used the same items to create an Openness to Experience
score for participants in the University of Michigan Alumnae sample. Each
participant was given a score based on her feelings about her current age,
and a mean score was computed for each participant (a coefficients in the
three samples ranged from .62 to .67). For example, when calculating an
openness score for women from the class of 1972, we used only their responses to the five items asking about ‘‘in my 40s.’’
Costa and McCrae (1992, 1995) and others (Benet-Martı́nez & John,
1998) have argued that openness includes multiple facets capturing aesthetic sensibility, emotional awareness, imagination, and intellectual curiosity as well as a preference for novelty and variety. On their face, the items
included in the FBOQ capture at least some of these facets, but certainly
not all of them. For example, none of the items included captured aesthetic
sensibility, and only one might be said to address need for novelty and
variety (e.g., ‘‘discovering new parts of myself’’). Rather, the items seem
most fully to capture emotional awareness and intellectual curiosity (e.g.,
feeling an intense interest in my inner life, feeling I understand how the
world and other people work, appreciating my complexity, and realizing
the larger picture).
Political activism for social change. Activism in all samples was assessed
using a measure similar to that used by Duncan and Stewart (2007),
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asking about engagement across eight subject matter domains (AIDS,
antiwar, civil rights, environment, gay/lesbian rights, homelessness,
prochoice activism, and women’s rights), and assessing six different types
of involvement for each cause (signed a petition, gave money, wrote a
letter or called a public office, attended a meeting, was an active member
of an organization, attended a demonstration or rally). All of these items
assess individuals’ actions aimed at making social changes that might be
broadly understood as liberal or left-leaning ideologically. This scale was
designed to account for the breadth of involvement in a particular domain
as well as overall participation. Participants received a score of 1 if they
checked a box and 0 if they did not. Responses were then summed across
all eight domains, each with six levels of possible participation. A total
activism score was assigned to each participant, with a possible score of
48. Mean scores ranged from 4.60 to 13.79 across the six samples.
STUDY 1: PERSONALITY AND ACTIVISM IN MIDDLE-AGED
ADULTS
Method
Study 1 included four samples of middle-aged women, described above.
These were the Radcliffe sample, the Smith sample, and the Michigan
middle-aged and Michigan older adult samples.
To assess Openness to Experience in the Radcliffe and the Smith samples, we used the BFI. The FBOQ was used to assess openness in the
Michigan middle-aged and Michigan older adult cohorts. We used PPS 1
to assess PPS and the same activism scale in all four samples.
In this study we expected that Openness to Experience would be positively related to PPS and PPS would be positively related to activism. We
also expected that there would be an indirect path from openness to activism, through PPS, in all samples. We did not expect Openness to Experience to be a direct predictor of activism once we controlled for the
effects of PPS.
Analyses
The mean PPS score for the four samples ranged from 2.08 to 2.26, similar to the means found in the Radcliffe and Smith samples with different
items, from 1995 (Duncan & Stewart, 2007). The Radcliffe, Smith 2005,
and Smith 1995 samples had similar means on the BFI (M 5 4.06,
SD 5 0.58; M 5 4.01, SD 5 0.61; M 5 3.90, SD 5 0.73). The Michigan
middle-aged and Michigan older adult cohorts’ mean scores on the
FBOQ scale were also similar (M 5 2.38, SD 5 0.43 and M 5 2.39,
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SD 5 0.43, respectively). Activism scores for the four samples ranged
from 9.71 (SD 5 8.47) to 12.06 (SD 5 9.12).
Simple Pearson correlations were run to test the relationship between
openness and PPS and between PPS and activism. To test the indirect
effect (Figure 1) of openness on activism, we used Preacher and Hayes’
(2004, 2008) bootstrap method. For all of the analyses in this study, we
constructed 95% confidence intervals, using 1,000 bootstrap estimates.
An indirect effect is considered significant if 0 does not fall between the
calculated confidence intervals.
Over-time analyses that capitalized on the availability of data from the
Smith College sample assessing openness from an earlier wave were run
using the same indirect effects analyses. Two sets of across-time analyses
were conducted, one using openness from 1995 to predict both PPS and
activism in 2005 and the second using openness in 1995 to predict both
PPS in 1995 and activism in 2005.
Results
Cross-sectional Analyses
We ran a series of Pearson correlations testing the first hypothesis,
and the findings supported our prediction that openness would be
positively related to PPS in the middle-aged samples: Radcliffe
(r 5 .23, po.05), the Michigan older adult cohort (r 5 .23, po.05),
Smith (r 5 .37, po.001), and the Michigan middle-aged cohort
(r 5 .20, po.05). PPS was significantly related to activism across
all four middle-aged samples: Radcliffe (r 5 .28, po.01), the Michigan older adult cohort (r 5 .42, po.001), Smith (r 5 .43, po.001),
and Michigan middle-age cohort (r 5 .49, po.001).
As described above, we conducted analyses assessing both the direct
and indirect effects of openness on activism through PPS. Standardized
beta weights for the direct and indirect effects are reported in Table 1.
As expected, in all samples, openness exerted significant indirect effects
on activism, through PPS. Also as expected, openness was not significantly related to activism in the Radcliffe, Smith 2005, or the Michigan
middle-aged adult cohort samples. Counter to our expectation,
openness and activism were positively and significantly related in the
Michigan older adult sample. However, the relationship between
openness and activism was reduced to nonsignificance even in the
Michigan older adult sample once the effect of PPS was accounted
for. In all cases, the significant indirect effects indicated that PPS fully
mediated the relationship between openness and activism.
957
Openness and Activism
Across-Time Analyses
All across-time analyses were run using data from the Smith College
class of 1964 sample. The stability correlations for the three main
variables of interest in this sample (between 1995 and 2005) were as
follows: openness to experience, r 5 .85, po.001; PPS, r 5 .71,
po.001; and activism, r 5 .67, p 5 o.001. To test our hypotheses
across time, we looked at the relationship of openness in 1995 to PPS
in 1995 and activism in 2005, and the relationship between openness
in 1995 and PSS and activism in 2005.
Openness in 1995 was significantly related to both PPS in 1995
(r 5 .36, po.001) and in 2005 (r 5 .42, po.001). PPS in 1995 was
also related to activism in 2005 (r 5 .36, po.001). Openness in 1995
was not significantly related to activism in 2005 (r 5 17, p 5 .12).
Figures 2 and 3 show that the indirect relationship between openness
and activism, via PPS, is stable across time; in both cases the indirect
effect is significant. Openness exerts significant indirect effects on
activism across time.
Though we had no theoretical reason to think that other BFI
personality factors might be indirectly related to activism for social
change through PPS, we note that for those samples where we had
the BFI (Smith and Radcliffe), we ran analyses examining the association between the four other Big Five factors (Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism), and both PPS and
activism. There were only two significant relationships (of the 16
zero-order correlations run). Agreeableness was significantly related
to activism (r 5 .17, po.05) in the Smith sample, and Extraversion
was significantly related to PPS (r 5 .22, po.05) in the Radcliffe
sample. These correlations were not predicted nor consistent.
Discussion
We used the same measures to establish that the individual tendency
to personalize social and political events (PPS) and engagement in
activism were significantly related to each other in all four samples
cross-sectionally and in one sample across time. These findings confirm the consistency of this relationship initially documented by
Duncan and Stewart (2007) in two of the middle-aged samples
(Radcliffe and Smith) in 1995.
In contrast to our prediction, there was a significant relationship
between openness and activism in the Michigan older-adult cohort.
0.21–3.00
1.17n
(0.69)
0.15n
(0.07)
7.08
(2.44)
0.008
(1.79)
1.18
(1.77)
Full
.07
Note. CI 5 confidence interval.
n
po.05, nnpo.01, nnnpo.001.
Adjusted R2
CI
Mediation
Total indirect effect
ab path
c 0 path
c path
b path
Direct effects
a path
B
(SE)
Radcliffe
(N 5 91)
.01–.20
.07n
(.04)
.23n
(.11)
.31nn
(.11)
.001
(.11)
.07
(.11)
b
(SE)
1.21–4.56
2.85n
(0.86)
0.25nnn
(0.06)
11.27
(1.98)
1.12
(1.41)
1.74
(1.35)
B
(SE)
Full
.20
b
(SE)
.07–.28
.17n
(.05)
.37nnn
(.08)
.46nnn
(.08)
.07
(.09)
.11
(.08)
Smith 2005
(N 5 128)
0.22–4.26
1.91
(0.97)
0.24n
(0.10)
8.05
(1.78)
3.97n
(1.95)
2.06
(1.82)
B
(SE)
Full
.20
.02–.20
.09n
(.04)
.23n
(.10)
.38nnn
(.08)
.19n
(.09)
.10
(.09)
b
(SE)
Michigan Older Adults
(N 5 95)
0.41–4.35
2.10n
(0.99)
0.18n
(0.08)
11.90nnn
(1.88)
3.43
(1.88)
1.33
(1.70)
B
(SE)
Full
.23
.02–.19
.10
(.04)
.17n
(.07)
.57nnn
(.09)
.16
(.09)
.06
(.07)
b
(SE)
Michigan Middle-Aged
(N 5 140)
Table 1
Direct and Indirect Effects of Openness Through PPS on Activism in Middle-Aged Samples
959
Openness and Activism
Openness
1995
.41***
PPS
1995
.39**
Activism
2005
.01
Figure 2
Indirect relationship of Openness to Experience (1995), through PPS
(1995), to total activism (2005) in middle-aged adults (Smith College
sample). N 5 78. Adjusted R2 5 .13. Total indirect effects 5 .16 (.06);
CI 5 .07–.30. All coefficients are standardized. nnpo.01. nnnpo.001.
However, PPS fully mediated this relationship. Thus, as predicted,
among middle-aged women, openness is a consistently significant
indirect predictor of activism through PPS.
We found only scattered relationships between two of the other
Big Five personality traits and either PPS or activism, consistent
with the proposition (Carney et al., 2008; McCrae, 1996) that Openness to Experience is a unique basic personality trait in terms of its
relationship to political attitudes and behaviors.
Because undergraduates and young adults may have a different
set of developmental concerns, we tested our model in two younger
samples. We hypothesized that there might be a direct association
between Openness to Experience and activism in undergraduates
and young adults not fully mediated by PPS. However, we also
hypothesized that the association between openness and PPS (and
PPS and activism) would remain robust.
Openness
1995
.37***
PPS
2005
–.11
.46***
Activism
2005
Figure 3
Indirect relationship of Openness to Experience (1995), through PPS
(2005), to total activism (2005) in middle-aged adults (Smith College
sample). N 5128. Adjusted R2 5 .20. Total indirect effects 5 .17 (.05);
CI 5 .08–.29. All coefficients are standardized. nnnpo.001.
960
Curtin, Stewart, & Duncan
STUDY 2: PERSONALITY AND ACTIVISM IN YOUNG ADULTS
Methods
Study 2 included two young-adult samples, described above: the undergraduate cohort and the young-adult cohort. To assess Openness to Experience in the undergraduate cohort, we used the BFI. The FBOQ was
used to assess openness in the young-adult cohort. We used the PPS 2 to
calculate a PPS score for the undergraduates and the PPS 1 for the youngadult cohort. We used the same scale to measure activism in both samples.
The mean PPS score for both samples was less than 2 (M 5 1.84,
SD 5 0.37, for the undergraduate sample and M 5 1.80, SD 5 0.40, for
the young-adult cohort), slightly lower than averages (2.02 and 2.10)
found in previous samples of college-aged students (Duncan, 2005). The
undergraduate sample’s mean was 3.44 (SD 5 0.65) on the 5-point BFI
openness scale, and the young-adult cohort’s mean was 2.32 (SD 5 0.41)
on the 3-point FBOQ, both above the midpoint on their respective scales.
Finally, the undergraduate cohort was far less politically active
(M 5 3.55, SD 5 3.95) than the young-adult cohort, who were tested in
their 20s and had graduated from the same university in the early 1990s
(M 5 10.31, SD 5 8.69).
Results
To test the first hypothesis, we ran bivariate Pearson correlations. As
predicted, there was a significant positive relationship between openness and PPS in the undergraduate cohort (r 5 .33, po.001); however, the relationship in the young-adult cohort was only a trend, not
significant (r 5 .19, p 5 .07). There was a significant relationship between PPS and activism in both the undergraduate cohort (r 5 .34,
po.001) and in the young-adult cohort (r 5 .26, po.05).
To test the indirect effect (Figure 1) of openness on activism, we
used Preacher and Hayes’ (2004, 2008) bootstrap method described
above. Standardized beta weights for the direct and indirect effects
are reported in Table 2. Consistent with our expectation that openness would play a role in predicting activism for young adults,
Openness to Experience exerted significant direct effects on activism.
Controlling for the effects of PPS on activism, the relationship between openness and activism remained significant in the undergraduate sample, though not in the young-adult sample. In both samples
the calculated confidence intervals indicated a significant indirect
effect of openness on activism. In the undergraduate sample, PPS
partially mediated the relationship between openness and activism;
961
Openness and Activism
Table 2
Direct and Indirect Effects of Openness through PPS on Activism in
Undergraduate and Young-Adult Cohort Samples
Undergraduate Sample
(N 5 119)
Direct effects
a path
b path
c path
c 0 path
Young-Adult Cohort
(N 5 90)
B
(SE)
b
(SE)
B
(SE)
b
(SE)
0.19nnn
(0.05)
3.75nnn
(1.08)
2.35nnn
(0.61)
1.66nn
(0.61)
.31nnn
0.19w
(0.10)
4.89n
(2.25)
4.39n
(2.22)
3.48
(2.22)
.17w
(.10)
.23n
(.11)
.20n
(.10)
.16
(.10)
0.91n
(0.67)
.04n
(.03)
.32nnn
(.10)
.33nnn
(.08)
.23nn
(.09)
Total indirect effect
.10n
ab path
0.70n
(0.27)
(.04)
.22
Adjusted R2
CI
0.32–1.62
.04–.21
Mediation
Partial
.07
0.01–2.88
.002–.135
Full
Note. CI 5 confidence interval.
w
po.10, npo.05, nnpo.01, nnnpo.001.
openness exerted both direct and indirect effects on activism in this
sample. In the young-adult sample, the effects of openness on
activism were fully mediated. Openness only exerted indirect effects
on activism in this sample.
As in Study 1, we ran analyses examining the association between
the four other BFI factors (Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, and Neuroticism) and both PPS and activism in
the undergraduate sample (where we had the BFI). None of the
eight zero-order correlations was significant.
Discussion
The results from Study 2 partially support the study hypotheses.
There was a significant relationship between openness and PPS in the
962
Curtin, Stewart, & Duncan
undergraduate sample, though not the young-adult sample. This may
be because of the two different measures of openness used in each
sample. The FBOQ, used in the young-adult sample, was a proxy
measure of openness that may not have captured the multiple facets
of the construct. There was a significant and positive relationship
between PPS and activism in both samples. PPS partially mediated
the effects of openness on activism in the undergraduate sample; the
effects of openness on activism were, therefore, both direct and indirect. However, in the second sample, PPS directly predicted activism whereas openness exerted only indirect effects. These findings
indicate that, for undergraduates, openness may play a role in political mobilization as well as PPS. However, more proximate dispositional factors, such as PPS, play a more central role by young
adulthood. Finally, none of the other Big Five personality traits
was related to either PPS or activism in the undergraduate sample.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The current studies indicate that Openness to Experience is a significant and consistent indirect predictor of activism in both young
and middle-aged adults. Further, there is some evidence that the
relationship between openness and activism shifts across the life
span, playing a more direct role in undergraduate activism than in
middle-aged and older adults’ activism. In addition, the relationship
between openness and activism is generally mediated by the dispositional tendency to find social and political events personally
meaningful.
We also found that personal political salience was consistently
related to political activism. Given this finding, along with previous
research showing that PPS is significantly related to politicized collective identities and activism (Duncan, 1999; Duncan & Stewart,
2007), we suggest that it should be included along with measures of
collective identities in future studies that seek to understand the role
of individual differences in personality and identity in predicting activist engagements.
We are unaware of any other studies that have demonstrated a
similar direct relationship between activism and openness. Our findings suggest that we should broaden our current models of the role of
personality in activism not only to include proximate variables like
Openness and Activism
963
politicized identities and personality traits (such as PPS or right-wing
authoritarianism) but also to encompass more distal and general
personality traits that might help us understand both the more
immediate predictors of activism and what kinds of people tend to be
active in the first place.
Further, our data suggest that openness may have different
implications for behavior across the life span, indicating that
researchers need to seriously consider developmental changes when
looking both at the consequences of traits at different ages and at
activist engagement in different age cohorts. Fahs (2007) and others
(Stewart & Gold-Steinberg, 1996; Zucker, 1999) have found that
important life experiences between young adulthood and middle age
shape activist engagements in middle-aged adults. Many young
adults may not yet have experienced certain kinds of significant
and politicizing life events that often generate activist commitments.
During late adolescence, then, personality might play a more immediate and powerful role in motivating political involvements. However, given that this finding was identified only in our undergraduate
sample, it should be viewed with caution. Perhaps this particular
relationship is peculiar only to very young adults, still in the process
of identity exploration (Erikson, 1968). Alternatively, because the
undergraduate were the least active of all our samples, perhaps the
important issue is the degree to which one is active, rather than
age. Given that our undergraduate sample was recruited from an
introduction to psychology course versus the multiple disciplines
from across the university represented in the young-adult cohort, it
may be that our current sample is not representative of other undergraduates in terms of their low engagement. Further, the difference between samples may be because two different measures of
openness were used. The FBOQ, used in the young-adult sample, did
not seem to fully capture the need for novel experiences, an important facet of openness. It seems plausible that this particular facet of
openness might largely account for youthful engagement in activism,
with engagement serving as a new and possible intense experience.
Although we have included in this research six samples of people
of widely differing ages and drawn from three different educational
institutions, there are some important limitations to the current
samples: They were predominantly White, educated, and heterosexual and were engaged in relatively low-risk activism. In addition,
only one sample included men. The path to activism may look
964
Curtin, Stewart, & Duncan
different for people from different social backgrounds (Cole &
Stewart, 1996) or those engaging in high-risk activism (McAdam,
1986).
Another limitation is the left-leaning bias of our sample. We
doubt that the proposed paths would be as predictive for right-wing
activism as they are for left. There are compelling reasons to believe
that there may be different pathways to left- versus right-wing
activism. For example, there are differences in how ‘‘liberal’’ and
‘‘conservative’’ individuals explain and understand the world ( Jost,
Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003a; 2003b) that affect political
tolerance and policy endorsement (Sadler, Lineberger, Correll, &
Park, 2005; Skitka, Bauman, & Mullen, 2004). These differences in
how people see the world (based on their left versus right ideology)
may also mean that different motivations or personality traits predict activism for right- versus left-wing actors. For example, conservatism has been negatively correlated with openness (Carney et al.,
2008; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2004; Van Hiel et al., 2000). This suggests that openness may actually have an inverse relationship to
conservative action as compared with liberal activist behavior and
that different personality variables will positively predict activism for
conservatives. If individuals who are low in openness are more likely
to be conservative (or vice versa), they are also less likely to be high
in personal political salience. In short, the specific variables in the
model we proposed here may not allow us to predict how conservatives will act, but the value of considering basic personality traits
and more proximal attachment to the public sphere may be appropriate, and more investigation into the antecedents of right-leaning
activism is needed.
Our studies strongly suggest that a model of activist engagements
that unites a focus on collective identities with attention to personality variables like PPS and openness has potential to increase our
understanding of left-leaning activist engagements. Equally, a focus
on political engagement helps demonstrate that personality characteristics have consequences that matter in domains that matter.
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