Ripping the public apart? Politicians’ dark personality and affective polarization

Abstract

Growing evidence exists about the importance of dark personality traits – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in political leaders, broadly leading to heightened political aggressiveness and partisan conflict. Building on this expanding research agenda, we study the possible association between dark personality in politicians and deepened affective polarization – that is, increased affective distance between partisan groups coupled with stronger dislike for out-parties – in the public. We do so by linking a large-scale expert survey (NEGex) and a collection of post-election surveys (CSES), including information for more than 90 leading candidates having competed in 40 elections worldwide. Our results show that the dark personality of top politicians can be associated with upticks in affective polarization in the public – but only when it comes to the personality of in-party candidates (that is, a candidate from voters' preferred party), and only for high levels of ideological proximity between the candidate and the voter.