Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:11:21.016Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Don’t Know What You Got: A Bayesian Hierarchical Model of Neuroticism and Nonresponse*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2016

Jonathan D. Klingler ,
Gary E. Hollibaugh Jr.  and
Adam J. Ramey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Individuals who are more sensitive to negative outcomes from error are more likely to provide nonresponses in surveys. We argue Neurotics’ sensitivity to negative outcomes leads them to avoid gathering costly information and forming/reporting opinions about stimuli. Using data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we show Neuroticism is strongly and positively associated with NA/DK responses when placing politicians on a seven-point ideological scale. We then introduce to political science a Bayesian hierarchical model that allows nonresponse to be generated by both a lack of information as well as disincentives for response. Using this model, we show that the NA/DK responses in these data are due to inhibited information collection and indecision from error avoidance by Neurotics.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 549 - 569
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jonathan D. Klingler is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, PMB 505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203 ([email protected]). Gary E. Hollibaugh, Jr. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 ([email protected]). Adam J. Ramey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi ([email protected]). Author order was determined by a spirited game of Diplomacy. All authors contributed equally to the paper. The authors thank Megan Remmel for feedback and comments. Support through ANR–Labex IAST and the University of Notre Dame Center for Research Computing is gratefully acknowledged. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2016.50

References

Aldrich, John H., and McKelvey, Richard D.. 1977. ‘A Method of Scaling With Applications to the 1968 and 1972 Presidential Elections’. American Political Science Review 71(1):111–130.Google Scholar
Almlund, Mathilde, Duckworth, Angela Lee, Heckman, James, and Kautz, Tim. 2011. ‘Personality Psychology and Economics’. In Eric A. Hanushek, Stephen Machin and Ludger Woessmann (eds), Handbook of the Economics of Education, 1–181. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, and Franklin, Charles H.. 1994. ‘Uncertainty and Political Perceptions’. Journal of Politics 56(3):671–688.Google Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, and Brehm, John. 2002. Hard Choices, Easy Answers: Values, Information, and American Public Opinion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1986. ‘Issue Voting Under Uncertainty: An Empirical Test’. American Journal of Political Science 30(4):709–728.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1999. ‘Panel Effects in the American National Election Studies’. Political Analysis 8(1):1–20.Google Scholar
Berinsky, Adam J. 1999. ‘The Two Faces of Public Opinion’. American Journal of Political Science 43(4):1209–1230.Google Scholar
Blackwell, Matthew, Honaker, James, and King, Gary. 2015. ‘A Unified Approach to Measurement Error and Missing Data: Details and Extensions.’ Sociological Methods and Research. Advance Online Publication. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0049124115589052.Google Scholar
Bradlow, Eric T., and Zaslavsky, Alan M.. 1999. ‘A Hierarchical Latent Variable Model for Ordinal Data From a Customer Satisfaction Survey With “No Answer” Responses’. Journal of the American Statistical Association 94(445):43–52.Google Scholar
Brooks, Stephen P., and Gelman, Andrew. 1998. ‘General Methods for Monitoring Convergence of Iterative Simulations’. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 7(4):434–455.Google Scholar
Clinton, Joshua, Jackman, Simon, and Rivers, Douglas. 2004. ‘The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data’. American Political Science Review 98(2):355–370.Google Scholar
Clinton, Joshua D., Bertelli, Anthony, Grose, Christian R., Lewis, David E., and Nixon, David C.. 2012. ‘Separated Powers in the United States: The Ideology of Agencies, Presidents, and Congress’. American Journal of Political Science 56(2):341–354.Google Scholar
Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Keeter, Scott. 1996. What Americans Know About Politics and Why it Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Derryberry, Douglas, and Reed, Marjorie A.. 1994. ‘Temperament and Attention: Orienting Toward and Away From Positive and Negative Signals’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66(6):1128–1139.Google Scholar
DeYoung, Colin G., and Gray, Jeremy R.. 2009. ‘Personality Neuroscience: Explaining Individual Differences in Affect, Behavior, and Cognition’. In Philip J. Corr and Gerald Matthews (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology, 323–346. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Bryce J., Lasley, Scott, Mondak, Jeffery J., Remmel, Megan L., and Turner, Joel. 2012. ‘Personality and Legislative Politics: The Big Five Trait Dimensions Among U.S. State Legislators’. Political Psychology 33(2):195–210.Google Scholar
Ehrhart, Mark G., Ehrhart, Karen Holcombe, Roesch, Scott C., Chung-Herrera, Beth G., Nadler, Kristy, and Bradshaw, Kelsey. 2009. ‘Testing the Latent Factor Structure and Construct Validity of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory’. Personality and Individual Differences 47(8):900–905.Google Scholar
Flehmig, Hagen C., Steinborn, Michael, Langner, Robert, and Westhoff, Karl. 2007. ‘Neuroticism and the Mental Noise Hypothesis: Relationships to Lapses of Attention and Slips of Action in Everyday Life’. Psychology Science 49(4):343–360.Google Scholar
Fraley, R. Chris, and Roberts, Brent W.. 2005. ‘Patterns of Continuity: A Dynamic Model for Conceptualizing the Stability of Individual Differences in Psychological Constructs Across the Life Course’. Psychological Review 112(1):60–74.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Donald, B. Rubin. 1992. ‘Inference From Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences’. Statistical Science 7(4):457–511.Google Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, King, Gary, and Liu, Chuanhai. 1998. ‘Not Asked and Not Answered: Multiple Imputation for Multiple Surveys’. Journal of the American Statistical Association 93(443):846–857.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Huber, Gregory A., Doherty, David, and Dowling, Conor M.. 2011. ‘Personality Traits and the Consumption of Political Information’. American Politics Research 39(1):32–84.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Huber, Gregory A., Doherty, David, Dowling, Conor M., and Ha, Shang E.. 2010. ‘Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships Across Issue Domains and Political Contexts’. American Political Science Review 104(1):111–133.Google Scholar
Glasgow, Garrett, and Alvarez, R. Michael. 2000. ‘Uncertainty and Candidate Personality Traits’. American Politics Research 28(1):26–49.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Lewis R. 1981. ‘Language and Individual Differences: The Search for Universals in Personality Lexicons’. In Ladd Wheeler (ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 2, 141–165. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Gosling, Samuel D., Rentfrow, Peter J., and Swann, William B. Jr. 2003. ‘A Very Brief Measure of the Big-Five Personality Domains’. Journal of Research in Personality 37(6):504–528.Google Scholar
Gray, Jeffrey A., and McNaughton, Neil. 2003. The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An Enquiry Into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Matthew E. K. 2015. ‘Judging With Personality: A Psychoeconomic Model of Supreme Court Behavior’. Manuscript.Google Scholar
Hare, Christopher, Armstrong, David A., Bakker, Ryan, Carroll, Royce, and Poole, Keith T.. 2015. ‘Using Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey Scaling to Study Citizens’ Ideological Preferences and Perceptions’. American Journal of Political Science 59(3):759–774.Google Scholar
Heckman, James J. 1976. ‘The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models’. Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 5(4):475–492.Google Scholar
Hintze, Jerry L., and Nelson, Ray D.. 1998. ‘Violin Plots: A Box Plot-Density Trace Synergism’. The American Statistician 52(2):181–184.Google Scholar
Hollibaugh, Gary E. Jr., Rothenberg, Lawrence S., and Rulison, Kristin K.. 2013. ‘Does it Really Hurt to be Out of Step?’. Political Research Quarterly 66(4):856–867.Google Scholar
Holroyd, Clay B., and Coles, Michael G. H.. 2002. ‘The Neural Basis of Human Error Processing: Reinforcement Learning, Dopamine, and the Error-Related Negativity’. Psychological Review 109(4):679–709.Google Scholar
Jackson, John E. 1993. ‘Attitudes, No Opinions, and Guesses’. Political Analysis 5(1):39–60.Google Scholar
Jessee, Stephen A. 2015. ‘“Don’t Know” Responses, Personality, and the Measurement of Political Knowledge’. Political Science Research and Methods. Advance Online Publication. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.23 Google Scholar
John, Oliver P. 1990. ‘The “Big Five” Factor Taxonomy: Dimensions of Personality in the Natural Language and in Questionnaires’. In Lawrence A. Pervin and Oliver P. John (eds), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, 66–100. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
John, Oliver P., Robins, Richard W., and Pervin, Lawrence A.. 2008. Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Tversky, Amos. 1979. ‘Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk’. Econometrica 47(2):263–291.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Honaker, James, Joseph, Anne, and Scheve, Kenneth. 2001. ‘Analyzing Incomplete Political Science Data: An Alternative Algorithm for Multiple Imputation’. American Political Science Review 95(1):49–69.Google Scholar
Krosnick, Jon A., Milburn, Michael A.. ‘Psychological Determinants of Political Opinionation’. Social Cognition 8(1):49–72.Google Scholar
Little, Roderick J. A., and Rubin, Donald B.. 1989. ‘The Analysis of Social Science Data With Missing Values’. Sociological Methods & Research 18(2–3):292–326.Google Scholar
McCrae, Robert R., and Costa, Paul T. Jr. 1996. ‘Toward a New Generation of Personality Theories: Theoretical Contexts for the Five-Factor Model’. In Jerry S. Wiggins (ed.), The Five-Factor Model of Personality: Theoretical Perspectives, 51–87. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J. 2010. Personality and the Foundations of Political Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J., and Halperin, Karen D.. 2008. ‘A Framework for the Study of Personality and Political Behaviour’. British Journal of Political Science 38(2):335–362.Google Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J., Hibbing, Matthew V., Canache, Damarys, Seligson, Mitchell A., and Anderson, Mary R.. 2010. ‘Personality and Civic Engagement: An Integrative Framework for the Study of Trait Effects on Political Behavior’. American Political Science Review 104(1):85–110.Google Scholar
Plummer, Martyn. 2003. ‘JAGS: A Program for Analysis of Bayesian Graphical Models Using Gibbs Sampling’. In Kurt Hornik, Friedrich Leisch and Achim Zeileis (eds), Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Distributed Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: Technische Universitat Wien. Available at doi: https://www.r-project.org/conferences/DSC-2003/Proceedings/.Google Scholar
Ramey, Adam. 2015. ‘Weighing the Alternatives: Preferences, Parties, and Constituency in Roll Call Voting’. Journal of Politics 77(2):421–432.Google Scholar
Ramey, Adam J. 2016. ‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Crowd-Sourced Ideal Point Estimation’. Journal of Politics 78(1):281–295.Google Scholar
Ramey, Adam J., Klingler, Jonathan D., and Hollibaugh, Gary E. Jr. 2016. ‘Measuring Elite Personality Using Speech’. Political Science Research and Methods. Advance Online Publication. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2016.12.Google Scholar
Ramey, Adam J., Klingler, Jonathan D., and Hollibaugh, Gary E. Jr. 2017. More Than a Feeling: Personality, Polarization, and the Transformation of the U.S. Congress. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rivers, Douglas. 2003. ‘Identification of Multidimensional Spatial Voting Models’. Manuscript.Google Scholar
Roberts, Brent W., Kuncel, Nathan R., Shiner, Rebecca, Caspi, Avshalom, and Goldberg, Lewis R.. 2007. ‘The Power of Personality: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important Life Outcomes’. Perspectives on Psychological Science 2(4):313–345.Google Scholar
Roberts, Brent W., and DelVecchio, Wendy F.. 2000. ‘The Rank-Order Consistency of Personality Traits From Childhood to Old Age: A Quantitative Review of Longitudinal Studies’. Psychological Bulletin 126(1):3–25.Google Scholar
Robinson, Michael D., and Tamir, Maya. 2005. ‘Neuroticism as Mental Noise: A Relation Between Neuroticism and Reaction Time Standard Deviations’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89(1):107–114.Google Scholar
Rosas, Guillermo, Shomer, Yael, and Haptonstahl, Stephen R.. 2015. ‘No News is News: Nonignorable Nonresponse in Roll-Call Data Analysis’. American Journal of Political Science 59(2):511–528.Google Scholar
Rubin, Donald B. 1987. Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Schafer, Joseph L. 1997. Analysis of Incomplete Multivariate Data. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.Google Scholar
Soldz, Stephen, and Vaillant, George E.. 1999. ‘The Big Five Personality Traits and the Life Course: A 45-Year Longitudinal Study’. Journal of Research in Personality 33(2):208–232.Google Scholar
Tanner, Martin A., and Wong, Wing Hung. 1987. ‘The Calculation of Posterior Distributions by Data Augmentation’. Journal of the American Statistical Association 82(398):528–540.Google Scholar
Tausanovitch, Chris, and Warshaw, Christopher. 2013. ‘Measuring Constituent Policy Preferences in Congress, State Legislatures, and Cities’. The Journal of Politics 75(2):330–342.Google Scholar
Treier, Shawn, and Hillygus, D. Sunshine. 2009. ‘The Nature of Political Ideology in the Contemporary Electorate’. Public Opinion Quarterly 73(4):679–703.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel. 1992. ‘Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty’. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5(4):297–323.Google Scholar
Weisberg, Herbert F. 2009. The Total Survey Error Approach: A Guide to the New Science of Survey Research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zaller, John. 1990. ‘Political Awareness, Elite Opinion Leadership, and the Mass Survey Response’. Social Cognition 8(1):125–153.Google Scholar
Zaller, John, and Feldman, Stanley. 1992. ‘A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions Versus Revealing Preferences’. American Journal of Political Science 36(3):579–616.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Klingler et al Dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RVV3YW
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Klingler supplementary material

Appendix

Download Klingler supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 37.1 MB