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- Title
Education or Personality Traits and Intelligence as Determinants of Political Knowledge?
- Authors
Rye Rasmussen, Stig Hebbelstrup
- Abstract
Recently the causal influence of education on political knowledge has been questioned. Rather, pre-adult predispositions such as personality traits and intelligence are proposed as the real causal agents. This article investigates in two studies whether education retains its explanatory power regarding political knowledge when personality traits and intelligence are taken into account. One study draws on a draftee sample and has excellent measures of both personality traits and intelligence; the other study draws on a representative sample and has excellent measures of personality traits. Openness to experience and intelligence are found to be positive predictors of political knowledge and neuroticism a negative predictor of political knowledge. In both studies, education remains the single strongest predictor of political knowledge. Furthermore, education can, to a large extent, even out the differences in political knowledge between those with high and low cognitive abilities.
- Subjects
POLITICAL knowledge; PERSONALITY &; politics; INTELLECT; OPENNESS to experience; EDUCATIONAL psychology research; NEUROTICISM; COGNITIVE ability; POLITICAL psychology
- Publication
Political Studies, 2016, Vol 64, Issue 4, p1036
- ISSN
0032-3217
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-9248.12214