17:45 - 20:00
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Lior Sheffer
Discussant/s:
Miriam Sorace
Meeting Room U

Lior Sheffer, Eran Amsalem
Personality and the Policy Positions of Politicians

Matthew Rice, Jeffery Mondak, Megan Remmel
The Impact of Personality on Interest Group Ratings of U.S. Senators

Alessandro Nai, Loes Aaldering, Frederico Ferreira da Silva, Diego Garzia, Katjana Gattermann
The Dark Side of the Mood. Candidate Evaluation, Voter Perceptions, and the Driving Role of (Dark) Personality Traits

Mathilde Langgaard Sørensen
Does mindfulness training increase political tolerance? Reporting from a two-week field experiment

Dragana Vidovic, Gina Reinhardt
How Healthy is our Democracy: Public Health and Political Participation
The Impact of Personality on Interest Group Ratings of U.S. Senators
Matthew Rice 1, Jeffery Mondak 1, Megan Remmel 2
1 University of Illinois
2 Bradley University

In the United States, several hundred interest groups and other political organizations provide annual ratings of members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. These ratings are meant to reflect members' support for the legislative agendas of the groups in question. With focus on the U.S. Senate, this study considers the possibility that a psychological factor--variation in the core personality traits of senators--also influences how favorably or unfavorably senators are rated. The detection of personality effects would add to the growing body of evidence regarding the tangible significance of elite personality, while also providing suggestive evidence that interest group ratings may not be entirely pristine representations of legislators' stances on the policies of relevance to the rating organizations.