WEEK 5

Big Five

A set of five personality traits - openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism - that are stable characteristics of individuals.

Authoritarian Personality

Individuals valuing sameness and conformity to group norms, characterized by submissiveness to authority and favoring strict adherence to tradition.

Egalitarianism

The belief that all citizens should be equal regardless of personal characteristics.

Individualism

The belief that citizens should be able to succeed through hard work.

Populism

Viewing political conflict as between a virtuous citizenry and a corrupt elite, often leading to direct citizen involvement in politics.

Post-Materialism Thesis

Ronald Inglehart's theory that societal values are shifting from materialist concerns to autonomy and self-expression.

Ideology

A set of attitudes and beliefs about the goals of society and how to achieve them, often characterized along a left-right spectrum.

Ideological Innocence

The thesis that many individuals do not use ideological terms to describe political parties and have weak correlations between issues over time.

Symbolic Ideology

Citizens' awareness of ideological distinctions and identification with ideological terms, influencing vote choice.

Ideological Polarization

Refers to citizens becoming more consistent or extreme in their beliefs, and partisan groups becoming dissimilar in ideology and policy beliefs.