Are Personality Traits Related to Politicians' Positions on Immigration?

The political debates spurred on by rapidly growing immigrant populations in many countries have resulted in an extensive, and growing, scholarship that seeks to explain citizens' attitudes toward immigration. Yet, there is surprisingly an absence of research regarding the factors that correlate with political elites' positions on immigration. This study therefore seeks to address an important scholarly gap by exploring the factors that help to explain politicians' positions on immigration. Specifically, this study is inspired by the growing research into personality that underlines psychological traits as being important determinants for a wide variety of citizens' sociopolitical attitudes, including attitudes towards immigration. Using data from the 2010 Swedish Candidate Survey, our findings highlight that candidates' personality traits are related to their immigration attitudes. Specifically, extraversion and openness are shown to have positive relationships with attitudes towards immigrants. Furthermore, while the political context of the candidates can moderate some of the relationships between personality and attitudes toward immigration, our results show that personality traits are associated with immigration attitudes independent of political considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]