Personality and Political News Use: Examining Seeking and Avoidance

• In Event: Personality and Politics

Abstract

The advent of a high-choice media environment holds significant implications for exposure to political news, shedding light on individual-level factors shaping people's interaction with political content. However, the association between Big Five personality traits, motivations for political news use, and their effects on political interest and news consumption remains unexamined. This study explores the role of Big Five traits in this context, aiming to reveal the motives driving individuals' political interest and political information consumption. Leveraging original survey data from a Swiss-German sample in Switzerland and employing a novel measure of motivations for political news consumption, we discover that the Big Five traits exhibit dispositional effects on motivations for engaging with political interest and information consumption. These effects encompass fundamental tendencies of seeking and avoidance in relation to political news. We argue that socially active and open-minded individuals exhibit higher active information-seeking motives, while those with higher sensitivity may lean towards avoiding negative emotions and/or conflicts, consequently reducing their interest in political news.

Authors

• Chiara Valli, University of Bern

• Bang Quan Zheng, University of Texas at Austin