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Cited by 262

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 116 of the 116 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies

Open access
Verhulst, Brad, Eaves, Lindon J., Hatemi, Peter K.·2012·American Journal of Political Science

Abstract

The assumption in the personality and politics literature is that a person's personality motivates them to develop certain political attitudes later in life. This assumption is founded on the simple correlation between the two constructs and the observation that personality traits are genetically influenced and develop in infancy, whereas political preferences develop later in life. Work in psychology, behavioral genetics, and recently political science, however, has demonstrated that political preferences also develop in childhood and are equally influenced by genetic factors. These findings cast doubt on the assumed causal relationship between personality and politics. Here we test the causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes using a direction of causation structural model on a genetically informative sample. The results suggest that personality traits do not cause people to develop political attitudes; rather, the correlation between the two is a function of an innate common underlying genetic factor.

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Crossref · 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00568.x

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Metadata

Authors
Verhulst, B., Eaves, L. J., & Hatemi, P. K.
Venue
American Journal of Political Science
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2011-12-16
Volume
56
Issue
1
Pages
34-51
ISSN
  • 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
  • 1540-5907
OpenAlex
W2126990876
Cited by
262
References
116
FWCI
17.51
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00568.x
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Verhulst, B., Eaves, L. J., & Hatemi, P. K. (2012). Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00568.x

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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