Recomiendo esta entrada de Bryan Caplan en Econlog:
El trabajo que destaca Caplan pone en relación los cinco factores o dimensiones de la personalidad con la ideología:
For social liberalism, they once again find that it is associated with higher Openness and lower Conscientiousness. For economic liberalism (in the American sense of lower support for free-market policies), though, they get a much more thorough profile. Economic liberals are less Extroverted, more Agreeable, less Conscientious, less Stable (i.e. more Neurotic), and more Open. Or if you flip the perspective, free-marketeers are more Extroverted, less Agreeable, more Conscientious, more Stable, and less Open.
Dudas de Caplan sobre la solidez de los resultados:
1) [I]t does make me wonder if they're cherry picking issues where personality has strong predictive power. (...)
2) [I]n my work on education, IQ and economic beliefs, I found that the connection between education and pro-market views was a little spotty: While education never predicts anti-market views, it only predict pro-market views two-thirds of the time. In Gerber et al's Table A1, however, education doesn't seem to matter much for any of the economic questions. This makes me wonder how representative their questions are. (...)
3) In my research, I've found that higher IQ predicts more pro-market views. It's puzzling, then, that more Open people would be less pro-market, especially since Gerber et al don't control for IQ.
Los autores del estudio consideran dos hipótesis alternativas a la hora de explicar por qué las personas con esta personalidad tienden a tener una visión más liberal en economía:
Possibility #1: Some personalities are less self-interested than others. Their example:
One of the key components of Agreeableness is compassion, as opposed to competitiveness. Individuals who are particularly Agreeable may be more inclined to support policies that benefit others, while less agreeable individuals are unwilling to support interventions that do not improve their material self interest.
Possibility #2: Some personalities have different interests than others. Their example:
[W]e might expect people who are low on Emotional Stability to be particularly worried about the possibility that they will lose their health insurance and thus may be more inclined to support a government-sponsored program.
Caplan propone una tercera:
Possibility #3: Some personalities see the world more clearly than others. My example:
People high in Agreeableness are emotional and refuse to face the reality of trade-offs. So when someone suggests that the minimum wage might actually hurt the poor by causing unemployment, they just get hysterical. People low in Agreeableness, in contrast, are logical and eager to identify trade-offs. So when you ask them about the disemployment effect of the minimum wage, they calmly consider the argument, and realize that it makes sense.
Caplan anticipa la crítica de que está dejando en mal lugar a las personas de personalidad "amable":
But whose maligning whom? On Jungian personality tests like Myers-Briggs , they don't call it "Agreeableness." They call it "Thinking vs. Feeling." As a person at the 99th percentile of the Thinking distribution, I see the "Agreeableness" label as a conspiracy of the Feeling to condemn me for my truth-seeking disposition.
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