Just as WEIRD? Personality Traits and Political Attitudes Among Immigrant Minorities

Abstract A large body of literature has examined how personality traits relate to political attitudes and behavior. However, like many studies in personality psychology, these investigations rely on Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) samples. Whether these findings generalize to minority populations remains underexplored. We address this oversight by studying if the observed correlations between personality traits and political variables using WEIRD respondents are consistent with that observed using immigrant minorities. We use the Immigrant panel (LISS-I panel) in the Netherlands with data on first- and second-generation immigrants from Western and non-Western countries. The results indicate that the association between personality and political outcomes are, with few exceptions, highly similar for immigrant minorities compared to the general population.