Together, these two articles are a must-read. They help explain why genes and other biological factors might influence our political leanings. Biological factors (especially genetics) are the dominant cause of these Big Five personality traits, which then remain stable throughout life. In turn, these Big Five traits influence our political leanings (Gerber et al.) and our political activity (Mondak et al.).

The Big Five personality traits

Both articles adopt the “Big Five” approach that, they claim, has become widely accepted among psychologists. Quoting two psychologists, Gerber et al. sum up these big five traits as follows:

The Big Five - Gerber et al., pg 113

As Mondak et al. note, these Big Five traits are often summed up as OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (where neurotic is the opposite of emotionally stable).

Effects of personality on ideology

Gerber et al. argue that these Big Five personality traits influence our political leanings. Each trait may have different effects on our economic ideology (free market vs interventionist) as well as on our social ideology (pro-choice/pro-equality vs pro-life/pro-tradition). They expect four of the five traits to influence ideology. The only exception is extroversion, which they expect to influence political participation (as Mondak et al. show) but not ideology. Their predictions:

Using a very large sample drawn from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP), the authors confirm most of these predictions. I’ve pasted below their Figure 1. All hypotheses are confirmed. Their only error was in predicting that emotional stability would cause folks to lean left on social issues. As it turns out, emotionally stable folks lean right on both dimensions and neurotic folks lean left on both dimensions. So we learn that Conservatives are hard-working, organized, closed-minded, and emotionally stable. Liberals are lazy, disorganized, open-minded, and neurotic. Let’s see how the punditocracy spins that one. The effects of personality rival the effects of education and income.

Figure 1 from Gerber et al. 2010

Contextual effects

Gerber et al. also argue that these effects can be contextual, although they seem less committed to this possibility than Mondak et al, for whom environmental interactions were a critical part of the story. In particular, they argue that race might matter. For example, blacks tend to view poverty as caused by systematic forces rather than by laziness; as such, conscientiousness may have a weaker pull among blacks toward economic liberalism. Likewise, blacks tend to be surrounded by liberalism; thus, “openness” might actually lead blacks to question the liberalism that surrounds them rather than pulling them toward the left. Gerber et al. find support for these contextual interactions with a series of figures like the one below. When I look at these figures, though, it doesn’t look so much like an interaction to me–rather, it looks like it’s just harder to predict ideology using personality among blacks than it is among whites.

Figure 2a from Gerber et al 2010

Comment and Criticism

This article, together with the similar one by Mondak et al., is a must-read. I’m not sure whether I’m persuaded yet that I need to demand a personality index on every poll I work with. But these two articles introduce us to a new psychological approach that I’m sure we’ll see much more of.

A wise Latina

We like to think that in our form of government, political officials represent the citizens at large. Trouble is, it’s hard to know what “represent” means. Often, we talk about representation through two major lenses. “Descriptive” representation refers to whether people in government look like Americans generally (in terms of race, gender, maybe even age, occupation, class). “Substantive” representation refers to whether people in government make the sorts of decisions that Americans generally would make.

In a recent article, Bonneau and Rice take those two concepts into the world of judicial politics. Their basic question: Do black judges make different decisions than white judges? Bonneau and Rice provide a nice empirical answer to the question, but their interpretation of what their findings mean is confusing and less than persuasive.

Do black judges make different decisions than white ones?

Although there’s a large stack of existing articles asking the same question, previous work has produced mixed results. Bonneau and Rice argue persuasively that institutional context matters enough to resolve those mixed results in the literature.  Specifically, they argue that discretion matters. Some judges have discretion over which cases they hear; others do not. This contrast is most apparent when looking at state supreme courts. Some states have a three-tiered court similar to the federal system, with trial courts, intermediate courts of appeal, and then a state supreme court. Other states omit the intermediate courts of appeal. In either system, criminal defendants always have a right to appeal. In the absence of an intermediate court of appeals, then, the state supreme court has no discretion over which cases it will hear; it must hear all appeals.

Bonneau and Rice “contend that descriptive representation is translated to substantive representation when the court has discretion over their docket and thus an intermediate court of appeal is present” (p 3887).  Elsewhere, they state that “the link between descriptive and substantive representation relies on the expectation that minority and non-minority actors behave differently when faced with the same set of facts”–a curious statement that I discuss below, but one that I’ll accept for the time being. Putting it together, these two statements lead us to expect that race will have an effect (“minority and non-minority actors behave differently”) only when an intermediate court of appeal is present.

They test this argument by looking at the voting records of state supreme court judges, using a variety of appropriate controls (judge’s race, ideology, type of crime committed, etc). And what do they find? In states with an intermediate court of appeal, the judge’s race has no effect on voting; in states without an appeals court, race has a strong effect.

Wait–they find exactly the opposite pattern from what their theory implies. Didn’t they say that race should have an effect when there IS discretion (an intermediate court), not when there isn’t?

Perhaps I read too quickly, but nowhere did they acknowledge this curiosity or seek to explain it. We’re left, then, with an unexplained, unforeseen empirical finding. I know a fellow who likes to say, “The world is correlated at 0.3.” In other words, there are all sorts of correlations out there, but without a strong theoretical story explaining a particular correlation, we have no reason to suppose any particular finding is not random.

Bonneau and Rice are smart people, so I’m sure I missed something. But near as I can tell, the data did not support the theory.

Does substantive representation require that white and black judges vote differently?

Perhaps most curious about Bonneau and Rice’s article is this assertion, stated several times in different forms (including in the quotation given above):

“If there are no differences between white and African-American judges, then it also means that there is no substantive representation on the bench. After all, if African-American judges are deciding cases the same way as white judges, then neither group is representing the interests of minorities” (p 382).

Somebody help me understand why that needs to be true. Bonneau and Rice say nothing to back it up. Perhaps if black and white judges are deciding cases the same way, then BOTH groups are representing the interests of minorities. Must it be the case that only a “wise Latina” can make decisions about Latino defendants? Indeed, in their conclusion, Bonneau and Rice give evidence that would seem to indicate that both groups are reasonably fair to everybody:

“The vast majority of judges … are distinguished jurists with years of experience in the judicial system. These judges are also socialized the same way (both in law school and in the legal profession). This homogeneity in socialization and experience–largely unique to the judiciary–may serve to mitigate any racial differences that exist.”

I’m not trying to make an argument either way about whether the legal system is biased against minority defendants. I’m only saying that Bonneau and Rice need to back up their claim rather than merely assert it.

Parting thoughts

So where are we left?

• The authors find exactly the opposite of what their theory predicts–but they should have tried to explain this.
• The authors need to give further justification for one of their major theoretical assumptions: That substantive representation requires black and white judges to behave differently.