2015PsychologyOpen access

Big Five Personality Traits and Occupy Wall Street

Costas Panagopoulos, Jonathan Lehrfeld

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Abstract

We investigated Big Five personality traits for a novel sample of individuals engaged in politically and economically-charged protest activity at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City. We gathered data about protesters’ personality traits by administering the TIPI battery in a survey conducted in October 2011. We compared distributions of Big Five traits for the sample with population norms. We expected our sample to show higher levels of extraversion, openness, and emotional stability, and lower levels of agreeableness, compared to norms, with no difference in conscientiousness. We found mixed support for our hypotheses: our sample showed higher levels of emotional stability and extraversion, lower levels of agreeableness, and no differences in conscientiousness, but lower levels of openness.

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We investigated Big Five personality traits for a novel sample of individuals engaged in politically and economically-charged protest activity at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City. We gathered data about protesters’ personality traits by administering the TIPI battery in a survey conducted in October 2011. We compared distributions of Big Five traits for the sample with population norms. We expected our sample to show higher levels of extraversion, openness, and emotional stability, and lower levels of agreeableness, compared to norms, with no difference in conscientiousness. We found mixed support for our hypotheses: our sample showed higher levels of emotional stability and extraversion, lower levels of agreeableness, and no differences in conscientiousness, but lower levels of openness.

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Available abstract

We investigated Big Five personality traits for a novel sample of individuals engaged in politically and economically-charged protest activity at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City. We gathered data about protesters’ personality traits by administering the TIPI battery in a survey conducted in October 2011. We compared distributions of Big Five traits for the sample with population norms. We expected our sample to show higher levels of extraversion, openness, and emotional stability, and lower levels of agreeableness, compared to norms, with no difference in conscientiousness. We found mixed support for our hypotheses: our sample showed higher levels of emotional stability and extraversion, lower levels of agreeableness, and no differences in conscientiousness, but lower levels of openness.

Key concepts: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness to experience, Big Five personality traits, Psychology, Hierarchical structure of the Big Five, Extraversion and introversion, Big Five personality traits and culture

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