The association between agreeableness, extraversion, and support for secessionist movements: Evidence from a large survey of more than 33,000 respondents in Catalonia

- Lack of prior research on the role of personality traits in relation to support of secessionist movements
- Correlational tests of the association between the Big Five personality traits and support for a secessionist movement
- Participants consisted of more than 33.000 respondents living in Catalonia.
- Agreeableness is negatively associated with support for the Catalan secession.
- Extraversion is positively associated with support for the Catalan secession, although the evidence is not strong.

Does personality influence attitudes toward secessionism? Personality traits are important determinants of a wide range of political attitudes and behaviors. Prior work has mainly focused on the study of personality during regular processes of democratic political systems (e.g., vote choice, turnout, information acquisition, etc.). By contrast, this paper assesses that personality traits have an influence over the decision of individuals to support a secessionist movement. To test this, I rely on a survey distributed to more than 33.000 respondents in Catalonia, a region with a salient secessionist movement. Beyond the effects of demographic characteristics, political factors, descent-based attributes, economic considerations, and even identity attachments, the results confirm that the personality trait of Agreeableness is associated with supporting the Catalan secessionist movement. Although less consistently, there is some preliminary evidence that extraverted individuals are more likely to support the movement. I conclude that combining insights from political science, sociology and psychology in the study of dispositional and situational determinants of attitudes toward secessionism is fertile research ground.