More than a Feeling: Personality, Polarization, and the Transformation of the U.S. Congress

To say that the last few decades in American politics has been tumultuous is surely an understatement. As the members of the Democratic and Republican parties have become more ideologically cohesive, polarization has risen and politics has become more volatile. Nowhere is this more clear than in the halls of the United States Congress. A body once hallowed for its norms of cooperation and compromise has become mired in a polarized climate, seemingly unable to pass what ten years ago would be seen as routine legislation. This is especially notable in the Senate, where the smaller chamber size and close personal bonds between members has become more of a children’s story than a legislative reality.

Despite this new world we find ourselves in, there is scant evidence as to the causes of increased polarization in recent decades. While many pages have been printed demonstrating how polarization has arisen, precious little has been said trying to explain why. There have been significant attempts to look at shifting electoral concerns and gerrymandering as potential causes — with mixed results at best.

Even worse, political scientists have been ill-equipped to understand the causes of what might be called the next step in the evolution of polarization. Whereas two decades ago, polarization was more about members of the two major parties becoming ideologically disparate, we have now entered a world where members with similar ideological profiles behave differently. The last several years of Republican control in the House, for example, have shown deep divisions within the conservative ranks over how to pursue policy goals — and no clear answer has been offered for why two members with similar ideologies should behave so differently.

In More than a Feeling, we argue that understanding this latest phase of polarization requires looking beyond the standard story of legislative behavior. Rather than treating ideology as the primary determinant of legislative decision-making, we consider how more primal forces are at work in legislators’ calculations. Drawing on developments in psychology and experimental economics, we argue that the Big Five personality traits — Openness to new experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism — are key to unlocking this new legislative world.

While we are not the first scholars to consider how personality affects legislative behavior, advances in computer science allowed us, for the first time, to develop cross-temporal measures of legislator personality. Our data collection effort spans two decades of legislative speeches, committee assignments, press releases, roll call votes, campaign finance, bill proposals, and other sources, allowing us to reevaluate the “textbook” story of Congress and explain variation in legislative behavior even after controlling for ideology. We begin with the electoral process and move through major parts of a legislator’s career — proposing legislation, committee assignments, becoming an effective legislator, obstructive behavior, media usage, and moving on (retiring or running for higher office). The final part of the book explains how our findings shed light on both the standard ideological story of Congress and future trends in polarization.

You can buy it here.