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Segmentation Based on Personality Traits

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Segmentation Based on Personality Traits Segmentation based on personality traits: An online cross-sectional study in Greece Name: Alexandra Pantavou Student Number: 11351519 Contact information: [email protected] Academic Institute: University of Amsterdam and Graduate School of Communication Study Program: Master’s Program Communication Science Supervisor: Dr. M. Marjolein Moorman Course: Master’s Thesis Date of completion: January 31, 2018 Word Count: 5943 Segmentation based on personality traits 1 As political marketing collaborates with political psychology, personality traits become increasingly interesting to study in the field of political behavior. The integration of psychometric targeting in the political marketing routines of the “Brexit” and Trump’s U.S. presidential election campaigns, sparked the inspiration of this study’s topic. The thesis explores the relationship between personality and political behavior and tries to answer the question of what is the effectiveness of using psychometric traits as a segmentation method in political campaigns. In order to study this relationship, I conducted an online survey on a sample of 726 students living in Athens, Greece and studied how the five-factor model of personality, vote choice and political ideology associate with each other. Results suggest that certain traits predict political ideology -Intellect and agreeableness correlate with left- wing ideologies and conscientiousness and extraversion correlate with right-wing ideologies- but the traits account only for a small percentage of the variance explain in the variable (6.1%). This indicates that personality, at least for the Greek example, is not the most effective predictor of political behavior, and voter segmentation based only on personality would probably not be efficient enough on its own. All in all, further research could continue on the topic of psychometric traits and political behavior, by comparing personality traits to a variety of socio-demographics using a bigger sample, in the ultimate quest of revealing all significant and effective predictors of vote choice and voter segmentation. Introduction Political marketing experts are turning towards psychometric targeting, but why? This new form of voter segmentation is implemented through micro-targeting techniques and personalized communication, which means that instead of addressing the potential voter on the basis of his/her socio-demographic profile, psychometric targeting accustoms the message to the voter’s personality (Mathieson, 2017). Among the various definitions of political marketing, the one created by Jennifer Lees-Marshment (2014) has been the most Segmentation based on personality traits 2 concise definition until today. Her definition states, that political marketing is the way that political elites use their tools to understand, respond to, involve and communicate with their political market in order to achieve their goals. Breaking this definition down into steps, we observe the following pattern revealing itself. The political elites target the electoral market and by using the appropriate tools they act in hope of winning the citizens vote (Lees- Marshment, 2009). The first step of this pattern - and the one that this study primarily concentrates on - is the identification of the target voter. Arguably, voter profiling is the first and fundamental step in any communication plan, as knowing precisely to whom to send the message can both save the campaigns’ financial resources and guarantee better results (Jamieson, 2013). For many years political campaigns and exit polls concentrated around the concepts of voting behavior and socio demographics (Grassegger & Krogerus, 2017). During the digital years, however, with the help of big data, political campaigns have evolved and we are now witnessing the emerge of new political marketing tools, such as micro targeting. Micro targeting, is the technique of targeting citizens down to an individual level, so that the message can reflect the citizens personal issues directly and more efficiently than ever before (Barocas, 2012). As personalized messages are progressively gaining more popularity in all communication fields, the idea of implementing new dimensions to targeting and market segmentation is now being explored. Next to the socio demographic and voting behavior methods, political campaigns now are adding the technique of psychometric targeting to their routine (Jeffries, 2017). The technique of psychometric targeting is based on knowing the individual’s personality traits, for example how altruist or selfish, how traditional or progressive or how anxious or calm the person is before exposing them to a message, and then changing the message in order to fit with his personality preferences (Barocas, 2012). Admittedly, over the last couple of years, psychometric targeting has successfully been implemented in campaigns, sometimes in order to engage and get the citizens out to vote, and other times, in order to distract them from voting the opponent. Segmentation based on personality traits 3 Two recent examples come to mind when talking about micro targeting campaigns using psychological voter profiling. A rather recent example of a personalized political campaign is the unexpected win of Donald Trump in the USA. This campaign was developed by the social research company “Cambridge Analytica”, which based the campaign’s power on social media, by targeting all different types of individuals and exposing them to messages especially tailored to their profiles (Jeffries, 2017). These messages most of the times served in favor of Trump by targeting peoples’ personalities and sending them the same message but each time with a different tone which was more likely to appeal to their personality, and other times focused on distracting democrat voters from voting for his opponent Clinton (Mathieson, 2017). A similar example is the “Brexit” campaign, which was also developed by “Cambridge Analytica” and used psychographic profiling. Undoubtedly, both of these campaigns succeeded, but the extent to which they owe their success to psychometric targeting, is still unsure. These changes in the communication field, with micro targeting, personalized messages and psychometric targeting, have raised questions about the traditional strategies of political marketing and voter segmentation. The main of these questions, I aim to explore with this study. I attempt to investigate the relationship between personality traits -operationalized using the Big Five personality traits – and political behavior, in order to reveal to what extend personality does in fact accounts for political ideology and vote choice. RQ: To what extent do psychometric traits explain political behavior? More specifically, I explore how the Big Five psychometric traits of Intellect (Openness), Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion predict each party's voter choice and the participants political ideology. These five personality traits dimensions, referred to as Big Five, are a taxonomy of relatively stable patterns of thinking, feeling and behavior, that researchers have used before when assessing personality (Digman, 1990). I endeavor to answer this question by investigating the Greek political landscape. I chose to explore the relationship between personality and political behavior in a small western democratic country with a multi-party system, such as Greece, as other Segmentation based on personality traits 4 southern European countries, such as Spain and Italy can compare their results to this political landscape. I distribute the survey study among a student sample of 726 young adults, ranging in age from 18 to 35 and currently living in Athens. Segmentation in political communication When approaching a potential audience an important strategy to think about is segmentation. Segmentation in politics, is the art of identifying what sort of voters live where and then how to most effectively address those voters in a way that is most effective for the campaign (Lees-Marshment, 2009). Both big and small parties, can greatly benefit from sufficiently implying targeting to campaigns methods such as GOTV, persuasion targeting, small donation prospecting and volunteer raising and canvassing. Political segmentation, tries to identify common characteristics in the heterogeneous mass electoral market and later categorize the citizens in more or less likely voters. The variables of categorization can vary drastically over time and between countries. For instance, new emerging democracies, such as the one in Ghana, Africa require the deviation of the electorate according to their religion and ethnicity (Lees-Marshment, 2009). However, modern western democratic political campaigns give their focus on the electorates socio economics and voter behavior. Efficiently implying voter targeting in a campaign can occasionally prove to be challenging. For socio economics, one standard group within democracy is age. Various studies have depicted the differences between young voters and elder ones, with the latter group being significantly more conservative, compared to the first one (Davidson, 2005; Tilley, and Evans, 2014). Nonetheless, every categorization has its exceptions. People of a certain age group can vary remarkably from each other, depending on their economic status, education or residential area (rural vs. urban), to name a few. This makes socio economic categorization increasingly complex and voter prediction highly difficult (Lees-Marshment,
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