The Activist Personality: Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Opposition Activism in Authoritarian Regimes

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231152772
• Author: Jan Matti Dollbaum,Graeme B. Robertson
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(11) 1695–1723

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231152772

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The Activist Personality:

Extraversion,

Agreeableness, and

Opposition Activism in

Authoritarian Regimes

Jan Matti Dollbaum

1

and Graeme B. Robertson

2

Abstract

Why do people become opposition activists in authoritarian regimes where diss ent

invites social censure and can be dangerous? We make a new contribution to

answering this classic question: personality. For the f‌irst time outside of democratic

contexts, we investigate the association between personality traits and opposition

activism, arguing that some traits work universally, while others interact with

political context. We propose that—as in democracies—high extraversion pre-

dicts political activism, regardless of its pro- or anti-regime orientation, and, in

particular, that extraversion is critical to explain the shift from online to off‌line

action. We also argue that—contrary to democratic contexts—low agreeableness

predicts opposition activism in autocracies, because it reduces the perceived costs

of non-conformity. We test these arguments based on two independent survey

samples from Russia, a stable authoritarian regime. In a series of statistical tests,

including two case-control designs, we f‌ind consistent support for all hypotheses.

Keywords

political psychology, personality, opposition, activism, authoritarian regimes,

Russia/former Soviet Union

1

University of Bremen, Germany

2

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jan Matti Dollbaum, University of Bremen, Mary-Somerville-Straße 7, Bremen 28359, Germany.

Email: dollbaum@uni-bremen.de

What does it take to be an opposition activist in an authoritarian regime? The

degree to which participating in opposition activity is dangerous varies across

different kinds of authoritarian regimes, but it is always hard and rarely

rewarding in any material sense. So what is it that drives people, nonetheless,

to take up the challenge of f‌ighting for democracy and better constitutional and

civil rights in regimes that make such work potentially dangerous?

This is a classic question that has attracted scholars from a wide range of

traditions over more than 100 years from immiseration through relative

deprivation, to collective action and social movements, with different scholars

placing different weights on individual, collective and societal factors. In-

dividual factors like education and biography matter (Corrigall-Brown, 2012;

Lawrence, 2017;Verbaet al., 1995), so too do organizations ( Loveman, 1998)

and networks (McAdam, 1986). Previous, perhaps chance, involvement in

activism is also critical, fostering the development of values and identities

conducive to renewed contentious action (Beissinger, 2011;Mironova &

Whitt, 2020;Smyth, 2018).

In this paper, we focus on a different, possibly earlier, part of the causal

chain—asking what are the individual level factors that shape decisions to get

involved in opposition activity under autocracy and that can inf‌luence the

degree of involvement people undertake. Specif‌ically, we look at the political

psychology underlying activist behavior in autocracies. The political psy-

chology research to date is very limited in this area. We know that emotions

matter, both positively and negatively (Pearlman, 2013;Young, 2019) and that

personality traits matter for authoritarian support (Greene & Robertson, 2017;

Hasmath et al., 2019;Truex, 2021), but the research on the political psy-

chology of authoritarianism in general, and activism in particular, is thin. This

is ironic, since one of the most prominent theories of authoritarian collapse

places psychology front and center. In an enormously inf‌luential work, Timur

Kuran put forward the intuitively appealing, but empirically untested, ar-

gument that some people (exogenously) f‌ind authoritarian rule less bearable

than others and so are willing to step forward f‌irst when the risks are great and

the rewards are scant (Kuran, 1991). While theoretically inf‌luential, there is

remarkably little empirical research that actually digs down into who these

people are and what shapes their decisions.

We contribute to the individual level psychology of activism and suggest

an answer that varies across individuals and makes an important difference in

the likelihood that they will engage in opposition activism in an authoritarian

regime—personality. Certainly, protesting can have serious repressive re-

percussions for individuals in all kinds of political regimes. Opposition ac-

tivism under authoritarian political conditions is, however, a particularly

demanding activity. Not only does it subject individuals to the permanent

threat of state repression, it also comes at the risk of conf‌lict with a person’s

immediate social surroundings. Moreover, the chances of success are low, so

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