Varför är du Liberal? En kvantitativ studie om väljarbeteende och personlighet

Sammanfattning: The current study aims to investigate the predictive power of Attitudes, Past experiences, Comfort with differences, Participation in cultural activities, Moral, Free will and Altruism on voting behavior formulated as Degree of liberal. The study is a quantitative one with a sample of 144 Swedish students in Lund. Data was collected via an internet survey consisting of three scales: Personal Beliefs Scale (PBS), Attitudinal and Behavioral Openness Scale (ABOS) and Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) containing the seven predictors. A multiple regression analysis was performed. Results show that the seven predictors together had a significant predictive power on Degree of liberal (R2adjusted = .13, p = .001, 95%). Moral was the only variable with single significant predictive power on Degree of liberal (β = .24, p =.005). A reliability analysis showed a low Cronbach’s Alpha for Moral (α=.462) which complicates the possibilities of drawing a clear conclusion regarding the results. Furthermore two sources of error are identified in explaining the results: a cultural discrepancy in the translations of the tests and a target variable that was poorly adjusted for the sample.