Measuring Political Affiliation, Personality, and Morality: Do People Exaggerate Their Own Political Affiliation?
Political affiliation is an increasingly polarized and polarizing framework in American culture. Past research has shown a consistent correlation between personality and political affiliation, and morality and political affiliation, though to our knowledge, no study has examined all three constructs concurrently. In an effort to understand the polarization of the two major political parties, the present study evaluated political affiliation, personality, and morality to determine the relationships between them. We hypothesized there would be correlations between all three variables, if no exaggeration was present. We found mixed results relative to previous literature. One consistent result was Openness being negatively correlated with Purity in Democrats, however there were some results showing inconsistency such as Conscientiousness not being associated with Authority in Republicans that raises questions and speculation. Additionally, Agreeableness appeared to be significantly correlated with the Harm foundation in Democrats, but not with the Fairness foundation. We speculated that there is a possibility that the Republicans and Democrats in our study may have exaggerated their party affiliation. Unfortunately, due to the correlational nature, limitations, and low sample size of the study, no confident conclusions could be made about exaggerations of one’s political affiliation.