| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5036208 | Personality and Individual Differences | 2017 | 6 Pages |
â¢Self-reported political ideology is hypothesized to be related to criminal conduct.â¢Data from a large, longitudinal dataset containing self-reported measures of ideology and criminal conduct were analyzed.â¢Liberal political ideology was significantly associated with crime cross-sectionally and longitudinally.â¢Subgroup analyses confirmed the association for whites and for females.
Political ideology represents an imperfect yet important indicator of a host of personality traits and cognitive preferences. These preferences, in turn, seemingly propel liberals and conservatives towards divergent life-course experiences. Criminal behavior represents one particular domain of conduct where differences rooted in political ideology may exist. Using a national dataset, we test whether and to what extent political ideology is predictive of self-reported criminal behavior. Our results show that self-identified political ideology is monotonically related to criminal conduct cross-sectionally and prospectively and that liberals self-report more criminal conduct than do conservatives. We discuss potential causal mechanisms relating political ideology to individual conduct.
