Voters’ personality traits, satisfaction with life and political party preference in Lithuania

Abstract

Political Psychology is a very new field of scientific interest in Lithuania and this paper is going to be one of the first scientific researches in our country. The present study was aimed at investigating the relationships between basic personality characteristics of voters and political party preference. In our research we tried to verify if there existed the relation among personality traits, self-esteem, locus of control, satisfaction with life and political party preferences. Method: this study was performed on voluntary recruited undergraduate students (n= approx. 800) from several universities and colleges in Lithuania. The surveyed were divided into two groups: left oriented voters and right oriented voters. These groups were matched by sex, age and socio-economic status. The data gathering was executed two weeks after the municipality elections (February 25, 2007). For measuring voters’ psychological characteristics, the H.J. and S.B. Eysencks’ personality questionnaire, M.Rosenberg’s self-esteem questionnaire, E.Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale and J.Rotter’s the Locus of Control Scale were used in the research. The translation of these scales into Lithuanian followed established guidelines, including appropriate use of independent back translations. Additional demographic data were collected that may be related to party preference. At this moment the data are gathered for this study, so the first results will be calculated in the nearest future.