Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie

Clickard suggested I look more deeply into personality as a factor in voting behavior. Specifically, he pointed me to the five-factor model of personality, which represents personality as a set of ratings on five scales: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. With time and testing, the measurement of these five traits has proven to be a powerful predictor of many aspects of people’s lives. A person scoring high in conscientiousness, for example, is more likely to do well in school. A person scoring higher in neuroticism is more likely to develop depression. Artists and creative people tend to score high in openness. Those who are less open and more conscientious tend to be Republicans. This sounds simple, but the Big Five model can be an immensely useful tool in predicting voters’ behavior.