Article Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36(5) 655–664 © 2010 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0146167210366854 http://pspb.sagepub.com Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives: Associations of Agreeableness With Political Ideology and Moral Values Jacob B. Hirsh 1 , Colin G. DeYoung 2 , Xiaowen Xu 1 , and Jordan B. Peterson 1 Abstract Political conservatism has been characterized by resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, with liberalism characterized by the polar opposite of these values. Political attitudes are heritable and may be influenced by basic personality traits. In previous research, conservatism (vs. liberalism) has been associated positively with Conscientiousness and negatively with Openness-Intellect, consistent with the association of conservatism with resistance to change. Less clear, however, are the personality traits relating to egalitarianism. In two studies, using a personality model that divides each of the Big Five into two aspects, the present research found that one aspect of Agreeableness (Compassion) was associated with liberalism and egalitarianism, whereas the other (Politeness) was associated with conservatism and traditionalism. In addition, conservatism and moral traditionalism were positively associated with the Orderliness aspect of Conscientiousness and negatively with Openness-Intellect. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of personality’s relation to political attitudes and values. Keywords personality, politics, morality, conservatism, liberalism Received January 10, 2009; revision accepted September 6, 2009 Although psychologists have long been interested in study- ing political attitudes and orientations (Adorno, Frenkel- Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Eysenck, 1954; Rokeach, 1973), there has recently been a renewed interest in studying political behavior from social-cognitive and motiva- tional perspectives (Jost, 2006; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008). These frame- works argue that the adoption of different political beliefs satisfies a variety of motivational needs. In particular, politi- cal conservatism is thought to be a belief system predicated on resistance to change and the acceptance of inequality, strate- gies that serve as defenses against the experience of threat and uncertainty (Jost et al., 2007). Support for this model has come from both correlational research, in which conservative beliefs are associated with measures of uncertainty avoid- ance and acceptance of inequality, and experimental manip- ulations, in which increasing the salience of a threat leads to greater support of conservative values (Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004; Landau et al., 2004). An important feature of these models is that political beliefs are derived from deeper psychological needs, which suggests that individuals may be predisposed by their personalities to adopt particular ideological perspectives. Findings that political attitudes are heritable and thus genetically influ- enced (Bouchard et al., 2003; Koenig & Bouchard, 2006) highlight the possibility of a connection to basic traits. Consis- tent with this possibility, research has demonstrated that con- servatives tend to be higher in trait Conscientiousness, whereas liberals are higher in trait Openness-Intellect (Carney, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2008; Goldberg & Rosolack, 1994; Jost, 2006). Although this combination of personality traits clearly relates to a preference for tradition, order, and stability (McCrae & Costa, 1997; Roberts, Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg, 2005), it fails to explain the second core aspect of 1 University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2 University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Corresponding Author: Jacob B. Hirsh, University of Toronto, Department of Psychology, 4th Floor, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G3 Email: jacob.hirsh@utoronto.ca