Research Feed

This essay speculates about why some surveys find American liberals, especially young women, generally report more depression and anxiety than conservatives. It draws on a handful of studies, media coverage, and expert quotes. On personality, it notes that liberals tend to score higher in openness and neuroticism, while conservatives score higher in conscientiousness, which the author suggests might make them less willing to acknowledge stigmatized issues like mental illness. Other ideas include liberals labeling milder struggles as illness, social media use, and physical health differences. The author admits that since mental health diagnosis relies largely on self-report; which makes it interesting, but not a validated finding.

Wilson and Calanchini (2026) examined how cultural tightness — the strength of social norms and intolerance of deviance — predicts personality at regional levels. Across U.S. states, tighter regions scored higher in conscientiousness and lower in openness. Cross-nationally (56 countries), tighter nations scored lower in extraversion and the creativity facet of openness. Agreeableness, neuroticism, and most conscientiousness facets showed no consistent relationships with tightness.

This state-level analysis reveals that the American response to COVID-19 was driven by a complex interplay of politics and personality. Even when controlling for partisan allegiances, Openness emerged as a key predictor of mask-wearing, while Conscientiousness predicted less stringent state restrictions. Using commonality regression, researchers found that the shared variance between these personality traits and political affiliation accounted for roughly 35% of the differences in state policies and mask compliance. This suggests that the 'political' divide observed by the public was deeply rooted in underlying psychological clusters that vary geographically across the United States.

This study examines the link between political ideology and personality by comparing adaptive traits with their maladaptive counterparts. While Openness to Experience remains a strong predictor of ideological leanings, the research highlights that traditional Conscientiousness has a weaker link than its maladaptive extreme, Compulsiveness. Additionally, maladaptive Disagreeableness showed a significant correlation with right-wing ideology. These findings suggest that certain political orientations may be more closely associated with specific rigid or antagonistic personality patterns than with broad, healthy trait variations, offering a more nuanced view of the psychological foundations of belief systems.

This study of 220 undergraduates confirms that Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) stem from distinct personality foundations. While both predict prejudice, they reflect different psychological profiles: RWA typically aligns with high Conscientiousness and low Openness, whereas SDO is more strongly associated with low Agreeableness. These results highlight that the motivation for intergroup bias varies significantly between those seeking social stability and those seeking group-based hierarchy.

This study identifies 'isms' as the foundational building blocks for measuring social attitudes, revealing a distinct structure of individual differences. A primary three-factor model emerged, with Conservatism and Authoritarianism functioning as major subcomponents of the largest factor. Notably, these social attitudes are largely independent of standard personality domains, with the sole exception of a significant correlation with Openness to Experience. These findings provide a new, content-valid benchmark for mapping belief systems outside of traditional personality frameworks.

This research identifies five robust dimensions of spirituality that constitute the Expressions of Spirituality Inventory (ESI): Cognitive Orientation, Experiential/Phenomenological, Existential Well-Being, Paranormal Beliefs, and Religiousness. While these dimensions correlate differentially with the Big Five, they remain conceptually unique. This suggests that spirituality represents a significant domain of human personality that is not fully captured by the standard Five-Factor Model framework.