‘The Bright and Dark Sides: Personality Traits and Party Members’ Campaign Activity’ with Stavroula Chrona (Sussex), with Tim Bale and Paul Webb

16 October – 12:00 to 13:00

We offer a novel contribution to the study of party members by examining the role of personality traits in shaping their political engagement. While existing research on personality and political activism has primarily focused on voters, little attention has been paid to the personality profiles of parties’ grassroots. Drawing on insights from political psychology and the literature on membership and using data from surveys fielded immediately after the 2024 UK General Election, we find that party members with extravert and agreeable personalities are most likely to get involved in campaigning. So too are members with (subclinical) narcissistic and psychopathic tendencies. These findings hold when controlling for ideological and demographic factors. Similar, though not identical, results are apparent for citizens who choose not to join parties but nevertheless help them out during election campaigns: for them, agreeableness and narcissism are once again associated with campaign activism, but so is openness to new ideas.