Personality and Public Administration: Policymaker Tolerance of Administrative Burdens in Welfare Services

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Lene Aarøe,Martin Baekgaard,Julian Christensen,Donald P. Moynihan
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13381

Research Article

652Public Administration Review • July | August 2021

Abstract:While related fields have turned to personality to understand human behavior, we know relatively little about

its role and impact in public administration. We review how personality has been studied in public administration

and offer an empirical test of how it relates to policymaker attitudes about administrative arrangements. Using the

“Big Five” framework and a sample of elected politicians, we conduct two studies showing how personality is associated

with policymaker tolerance of the administrative burdens that social welfare recipients experience. Politicians with

high conscientiousness are more tolerant of burdens, suggesting that they expect similar attention to detail from others.

Conversely, politicians who score higher on the trait of openness to experience are less tolerant of burdens, implying that

greater empathy toward the experience of others reduces burden tolerance. These relationships hold even after controlling

for political ideology, the standard explanation for burden tolerance in welfare programs.

Evidence for Practice

• Personality traits are widely used in psychology and political science to understand human behavior; key

traits are conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

• Personality is also relevant to public administration; previous research shows it predicts workplace attitudes;

and beliefs.

• In two studies, we find that elected officials’ attitudes about how social welfare policies should be designed

are shaped by their personality traits, even when controlling for their ideological preferences.

• Politicians who are highly conscientious are more tolerant of burdensome social welfare programs, whereas

politicians who are more open to experience are less tolerant.

In recent decades, a vast body of evidence points

to the role of individual personality traits in

understanding human behavior. Personality is

increasingly utilized as an explanatory variable in the

disciplines from which public administration draws,

such as psychology, and political science, explaining

outcomes such as political opinions (e.g., Bakker2017;

Gerber et al.2010), social trust (Weinschenk and

Dawes2019), job interest, career choice (e.g., Ackerman

and Beier2003; Dawis and Lofquist1984; Mount et

al.2005), and career outcomes (Judge et al.1999).

While public administration scholarship has long

speculated on the extent to which individual traits,

including personality, influence administrative

behavior (see, e.g., Merton’s(1940) discussion

of bureaucratic personality), empirical attention

to the topic has been limited, and few have used

validated personality measures in their research

(Nørgaard2018a; Wright2015). Little effort has

been devoted to understanding the role of personality

beyond bureaucratic attitudes and motivations, such

as job satisfaction.

We illustrate the possibilities for using personality

on a broader canvas for public administration.

Specifically, we use it to study a different but central

population in the governance process, elected

policymakers, and to understand a different but

important outcome: Preferences about administrative

design. In our study, these preferences are tolerance

of administrative burdens. Administrative burdens

are central to people’s interactions with the state and

influence take-up of welfare benefits (e.g., Brodkin

and Majmundar2010; Christensen et al.2020;

Deshpande and Li2019; Fox, Stazyk, and Feng2020;

Herd and Moynihan2018). They also shape how

administrative processes function in practice (Burden

et al.2012; Linos and Riesch2020). While studies

have documented the impact of administrative

burdens on citizen outcomes, little is known about

policymakers’ micro-level attitude formation regarding

administrative burdens. Previous literature points to

partisan, ideologically-based opposition to certain

policy programs as a key explanation for burden

tolerance (Herd and Moynihan2018). We argue

that other micro-level factors, including deep-seated

Lene Aarøe

Martin Baekgaard

Julian Christensen

Personality and Public Administration: Policymaker Tolerance

of Administrative Burdens in Welfare Services

Donald P. Moynihan

Aarhus University

Georgetown University

Donald Moynihan is a McCourt Chair

in the McCourt School of Public Policy at

Georgetown University. He studies the

performance of public organizations and how

individuals experience administrative burdens.

Email: donald.moynihan@georgetown.edu

Julian Christensen is a postdoctoral

researcher in the Department of Political

Science, Aarhus University. His research

focuses on citizens’ experiences of

administrative burden during interactions

with the state, distributive effects of

administrative burdens, factors affecting

decisionmakers’ support for policies that

impose burdens on citizens, and the role of

factual information in policy making.

Email: julian@ps.au.dk

Martin Baekgaard is a professor in

the Department of Political Science,

Aarhus University. His research focuses on

citizen–state interactions, including citizens’

experiences of administrative burden and

coproduction, why burdens are constructed,

performance management, and political

administrative relations.

Email: martinb@ps.au.dk

Lene Aarøe is an associate professor

in the Department of Political Science,

Aarhus University. Her research field is

political psychology, and her research

focuses on psychological biases and

political attitude formation, for example,

in relation to redistributive policies. She is

currently studying how various factors affect

decisionmakers’ support for administrative

burdens as well as psychological responses

to administrative burdens among citizens.

Email: leneaaroe@ps.au.dk

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 4, pp. 652–663. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI:10.1111/puar.13381.