5 Personality Traits Linked to Bias & Prejudice

Understanding the connection between bias prejudice personality traits is one of the most revealing areas of modern psychology — and the findings may surprise you. Most of us assume prejudice is simply a matter of bad values or poor upbringing, but a large body of scientific research suggests that our deepest personality characteristics play a significant, measurable role in shaping how biased we are toward others. Knowing which traits are involved is not about labeling people as “good” or “bad” — it’s about gaining the self-awareness needed to actually do something about bias.

A large-scale meta-analysis titled Personality and Prejudice: A Meta-Analysis and Theoretical Review synthesized data from 71 studies and over 22,000 participants to examine exactly how the Big Five personality dimensions relate to prejudice. The results paint a nuanced, evidence-backed picture: not all personality traits are equally linked to bias, and the pathways through which personality influences prejudice are more complex than a simple cause-and-effect story. This article breaks down those findings clearly so anyone can understand — and use — the science.

Once again, personality researcher and author of Villain Encyclopedia, Tokiwa (@etokiwa999), will provide the explanation.
※We have developed the HEXACO-JP Personality Assessment! It has more scientific basis than MBTI. Tap below for details.

What Are the Big Five Personality Traits and Why Do They Matter for Prejudice?

The Five-Factor Model Explained

The Big Five, or Five-Factor Model, is the most widely accepted scientific framework for describing human personality — and it forms the backbone of research into bias prejudice personality traits. Rather than putting people into rigid categories, the model measures everyone on 5 continuous dimensions, meaning each person falls somewhere on a spectrum for each trait. These 5 dimensions are:

• Openness to Experience: How curious, imaginative, and receptive to new ideas a person tends to be. High scorers embrace novelty; low scorers prefer the familiar.
• Conscientiousness: The degree to which someone is organized, responsible, and rule-following. High scorers are disciplined and plan-oriented.
• Extraversion: How socially energetic and outgoing a person is. High scorers thrive in social settings; low scorers tend to prefer solitude.
• Agreeableness: A person’s tendency toward warmth, cooperation, and empathy toward others. High scorers are compassionate and accommodating.
• Neuroticism: How prone someone is to negative emotions like anxiety, worry, and emotional instability. High scorers experience more emotional ups and downs.

Research suggests that not all 5 of these traits carry equal weight when it comes to prejudice. Studies consistently indicate that Agreeableness and Openness to Experience are by far the most relevant. The other 3 traits — Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism — tend to show weaker or more context-dependent relationships with bias. Understanding this distinction is the first step toward interpreting the meta-analysis findings.

What is Big Five Personality Test? Overview, Genetics & MBTI

The 2 Key Attitudes That Connect Personality to Prejudice

Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)

Between personality traits and actual prejudiced behavior, research identifies 2 critical attitudinal constructs that act as psychological bridges: Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Understanding these concepts is essential for grasping how personality traits can translate into real-world discrimination.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) refers to a tendency to defer to traditional authority figures, to strongly value social conformity, and to view those who violate conventional norms with hostility. People high in RWA tend to prefer a world with clear, stable hierarchies and established rules. This mindset can lead to prejudice against groups perceived as “outsiders” or as threats to the social order — such as immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, or religious minorities.

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is distinct: it reflects a general preference for social inequality and group-based hierarchies. Individuals high in SDO tend to believe that some groups are naturally superior to others and that social stratification is acceptable or even desirable. This attitude strongly predicts prejudice against groups that are seen as “lower” in the social pecking order.

• RWA is primarily driven by fear of social chaos — it tends to predict prejudice toward groups seen as deviant or norm-violating.
• SDO is primarily driven by a desire for dominance — it tends to predict prejudice toward groups seen as competitors or inferiors.
• Both RWA and SDO act as mediators, meaning personality traits influence prejudice largely by first raising or lowering these attitudinal dispositions.

The meta-analysis found that personality traits rarely cause prejudice in a direct, straight line. Instead, the pathway typically runs: low Openness → higher RWA → greater prejudice; or low Agreeableness → higher SDO → greater prejudice. This mediation model has important practical implications for prejudice reduction strategies.

Values vs Personality: How Your Traits Shape What You Believe

How Bias Prejudice Personality Traits Are Linked: The Core Meta-Analysis Findings

Low Openness to Experience → Higher RWA → More Prejudice

The most consistent finding across the 71 studies was that low Openness to Experience is a strong predictor of Right-Wing Authoritarianism, which in turn predicts higher levels of prejudice. This pathway was remarkably robust — it held up across different age groups, cultural contexts, and measurement tools.

People who score low on Openness tend to be more comfortable with routine, convention, and clearly defined social categories. They may find ambiguity threatening and prefer a world that feels predictable and structured. This psychological orientation aligns naturally with the core of RWA — valuing established authority and viewing departures from tradition with suspicion. Key characteristics associated with this pathway include:

• Preference for familiar social norms: Low-Openness individuals tend to feel more comfortable with the status quo and may perceive cultural or demographic diversity as unsettling rather than enriching.
• Low tolerance for ambiguity: Research suggests that a need for clear, black-and-white thinking can make it harder to appreciate the complexity of out-group members as individuals.
• Threat perception toward “different” others: When difference is interpreted as a challenge to one’s worldview, prejudice can emerge as a psychological defense.

Critically, when the meta-analysis statistically controlled for RWA, the direct relationship between low Openness and prejudice dropped substantially. This confirms that RWA is the primary psychological mechanism through which low Openness translates into bias. Targeting RWA-related thinking patterns — rather than personality itself — may be a more effective approach to prejudice reduction.

What is Openness? Big Five, MBTI N vs S Connections

Low Agreeableness → Higher SDO → More Prejudice

The second key pathway identified in the meta-analysis runs from low Agreeableness through Social Dominance Orientation to prejudice — and this connection was actually the single most robust finding in the entire dataset. Across cultures, age groups, and measurement tools, low Agreeableness and SDO were consistently and meaningfully linked.

Agreeableness reflects a person’s orientation toward others: how caring, cooperative, and empathetic they tend to be. People low in Agreeableness tend to be more competitive, less concerned with others’ feelings, and more willing to prioritize their own group’s interests over fairness. This personality profile creates fertile ground for SDO — the belief that hierarchies between groups are natural and acceptable. Specific features of this pathway include:

• Reduced empathy for out-group suffering: Low-Agreeableness individuals may find it easier to dismiss the hardships faced by groups they don’t belong to, making discrimination feel more justifiable.
• Competitive zero-sum thinking: A tendency to see social resources as limited and group success as coming at others’ expense can reinforce social dominance beliefs.
• Indifference to social fairness: People lower in Agreeableness tend to care less about equity, making hierarchical social arrangements feel less troubling.

When SDO was statistically controlled in the meta-analysis, the relationship between low Agreeableness and prejudice dropped dramatically — confirming that SDO is the primary mediator. Interestingly, controlling for RWA had little effect on the Agreeableness-prejudice link, suggesting these 2 pathways are largely independent of each other.

What is Agreeableness? Big Five, MBTI F vs T Relations

Conscientiousness: A Weak but Meaningful Link to RWA

High Conscientiousness showed a weak but statistically meaningful positive relationship with RWA, suggesting a modest indirect path to prejudice through rule-following tendencies. However, this link was considerably weaker than the Openness and Agreeableness pathways, and it did not reliably translate into a direct association with prejudice itself.

The logic is intuitive: highly conscientious individuals value rules, order, and social responsibility. Under certain conditions, this can predispose them toward authoritarian attitudes — particularly a respect for established institutions and a discomfort with those who break social norms. That said, Conscientiousness is also associated with deliberate, careful thinking, which may actually buffer against impulsive or emotionally driven prejudice in other situations.

• Rule-valuing orientation: Highly conscientious people tend to respect social contracts, which can align with conformist aspects of RWA under certain cultural conditions.
• Cultural moderation: The Conscientiousness-prejudice link was more apparent in some cultural contexts (particularly in European samples) than others, suggesting environmental factors shape when this trait becomes relevant.
• Weaker overall effect: Unlike Agreeableness and Openness, Conscientiousness is not considered a primary predictor of prejudice and discrimination in the current evidence base.

What is Conscientiousness? Big Five, MBTI J vs P Relations

Extraversion and Neuroticism: Minimal Direct Links to Prejudice

Extraversion and Neuroticism showed the weakest and least consistent relationships with prejudice of all 5 personality traits — suggesting these dimensions are largely independent of bias-related attitudes.

Extraversion measures social energy and outgoingness. While highly extraverted people interact with others more frequently, social activity alone does not appear to reduce or increase prejudice in any systematic way. Similarly, Neuroticism — the tendency toward anxiety, worry, and emotional instability — showed only marginal links to prejudice, and these were inconsistent across studies. It’s worth noting that in some cultural contexts (particularly in North American samples), Neuroticism showed a slightly stronger association with bias than in European samples, hinting that cultural values may shape which traits become prejudice-relevant. However, these findings were not robust enough to draw firm conclusions. The takeaway is clear: being anxious or outgoing, in itself, does not meaningfully predict whether a person will hold prejudiced views.

How Robust Are These Findings? Consistency Across Cultures, Ages, and Measures

One of the most compelling aspects of this meta-analysis is how consistently the Agreeableness-SDO and Openness-RWA pathways appeared across very different research conditions — pointing toward something close to a universal psychological phenomenon.

The research team carefully tested whether the results were influenced by factors like the age group studied, cultural background, or the specific psychological measurement tools used. Here is what they found:

• Age groups: Both student samples (mostly university-aged) and general adult population samples showed the same pattern of results. The personality-prejudice connection does not appear to be a phenomenon limited to young people or to older adults.
• Cultural context: Across Western samples — including both European and North American populations — the core Openness and Agreeableness pathways remained consistent. Minor variations appeared for Conscientiousness and Neuroticism, but not for the 2 primary traits.
• Measurement tools: Studies using the NEO-PI-R or NEO-FFI personality inventories tended to produce slightly stronger effect sizes than those using the BFI (Big Five Inventory). This may be because the NEO instruments include attitude-related items that conceptually overlap with RWA and SDO, slightly inflating correlations. Even so, the direction and significance of the relationships were consistent regardless of which tool was used.
• Type of prejudice measured: General prejudice (a composite across many different out-groups) tended to show stronger associations with personality than measures of specific prejudices like racism or sexism. This suggests that personality traits are more strongly tied to a broad dispositional tendency toward bias than to prejudice against any single specific group.

Taken together, these moderation analyses significantly strengthen the overall picture: the links between low Agreeableness, low Openness, and prejudice are not statistical accidents or cultural quirks — they appear to reflect something fundamental about how personality shapes social attitudes.

Japanese Personality Test: Must-Read for Self-Discovery!

Practical Strategies: Using Knowledge of Personality to Reduce Prejudice

Understanding the personality-prejudice connection is only useful if it translates into real, actionable steps — both for individuals who want to examine their own biases and for organizations looking to implement effective prejudice reduction strategies.

For Individuals: Building Openness and Empathy

Because the evidence points to Openness to Experience and Agreeableness as the 2 most critical personality dimensions, practical self-improvement efforts should focus on cultivating these qualities — even if your natural baseline is lower in these areas. Research in personality psychology suggests that while traits are relatively stable, they are not completely fixed, especially with intentional effort.

• Deliberately seek out unfamiliar perspectives: Reading fiction, traveling, engaging with documentaries about cultures different from your own, or even having structured conversations with people from different backgrounds can gradually increase cognitive flexibility — a core component of Openness. The why it works: exposure to complexity reduces the brain’s tendency to rely on simplified in-group/out-group distinctions.
• Practice perspective-taking exercises: Research in social psychology supports the use of perspective-taking — consciously imagining the experience of someone from a different group — as an effective way to increase empathic concern (a facet of Agreeableness) and reduce implicit bias. Even brief, structured exercises practiced over weeks tend to show measurable effects.
• Challenge your discomfort with ambiguity: Since low tolerance for ambiguity is a key driver of the Openness-RWA pathway, practicing mindfulness or cognitive restructuring techniques can help reduce the anxiety response triggered by unfamiliar people or ideas. The goal is not to eliminate the feeling but to respond to it differently.
• Audit your competitive mindset: If you notice competitive or zero-sum thinking in social contexts — the sense that another group’s gain is your loss — consciously questioning that framing can weaken the grip of SDO-linked beliefs. Ask: “Is this actually a competition, or have I been framing it that way?”

For Organizations: Structural Approaches to Implicit Bias

Because personality traits are difficult to change quickly, organizational prejudice reduction strategies are most effective when they target the mediating attitudes — RWA and SDO — rather than personality itself, and when they restructure environments to reduce the conditions that activate bias.

• Intergroup contact programs: Research consistently shows that structured, positive contact between members of different social groups reduces both RWA-linked and SDO-linked prejudice. The key conditions are roughly equal status between groups, cooperative (rather than competitive) goals, and institutional support for the contact. This works because it directly challenges the threat-perception mechanisms that link low Openness to RWA.
• Diversity training that addresses dominance attitudes: Training programs that specifically discuss social dominance beliefs — helping participants recognize when they are rationalizing inequality — tend to be more effective than generic “unconscious bias” workshops. Naming the SDO mechanism explicitly creates cognitive distance from it.
• Structured decision-making: Because personality-linked bias tends to operate most strongly under conditions of ambiguity and time pressure, introducing checklists, standardized criteria, and mandatory reflection periods in hiring or evaluation processes can significantly reduce the influence of personality-driven bias on outcomes.

Does Low IQ Predict Prejudice? 5 Research Findings

How to Spot the Dark Triad! 3 Types of Bad Actors Explained

Frequently Asked Questions

Are people born with personality traits that make them more likely to be prejudiced?

Personality traits like Openness and Agreeableness are influenced by both genetic factors and life experiences, meaning there is a partly innate component. However, research suggests these traits are not fixed — they can shift over time with deliberate effort, new experiences, and changing social environments. Being lower in Openness or Agreeableness raises the statistical risk of holding biased attitudes, but it does not make prejudice inevitable. Awareness of your own personality profile is already a meaningful first step toward conscious change.

Does low Agreeableness always lead to discrimination?

No — low Agreeableness is a risk factor, not a guarantee. The meta-analysis found that the relationship runs primarily through Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), meaning low Agreeableness tends to increase prejudice when it raises SDO attitudes. People who score lower in Agreeableness but who have deliberately examined their views on social hierarchy and fairness may not show elevated prejudice at all. Trait tendencies interact with awareness, context, and personal values in complex ways.

Can increasing Openness to Experience actually reduce prejudice?

Research suggests it can. Studies indicate that intentionally expanding one’s exposure to different cultures, perspectives, and ideas — through travel, reading, cross-cultural friendships, or even immersive storytelling — tends to increase Openness-related qualities like intellectual curiosity and tolerance for ambiguity. Since low Openness leads to prejudice largely through Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), activities that reduce rigid, conformity-driven thinking can interrupt that pathway. The effect is gradual rather than immediate, but there is genuine scientific support for this approach.

What is the difference between Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)?

RWA and SDO are related but distinct attitudes. RWA reflects a strong preference for conformity to traditional authority and hostility toward those who deviate from established norms — it tends to predict prejudice against groups seen as threatening the social order. SDO reflects a preference for group-based hierarchies and acceptance of inequality — it tends to predict prejudice against groups seen as lower-status. Research suggests personality connects to these 2 constructs through different traits: low Openness primarily links to RWA, while low Agreeableness primarily links to SDO.

How can I objectively assess my own implicit biases?

Several tools can help with self-assessment. Implicit Association Tests (IATs), available through university research programs, measure the speed of mental associations between concepts and can reveal biases that operate below conscious awareness. Beyond formal tests, keeping a reflective journal about social interactions, seeking honest feedback from people with different backgrounds, and paying attention to your emotional reactions when encountering out-group members can all provide valuable data. The goal is not self-judgment but honest self-observation.

Does prejudice look the same across all cultures, or does personality matter differently in different countries?

The core findings — that low Agreeableness links to SDO-driven prejudice, and low Openness links to RWA-driven prejudice — appear consistently across Western cultures studied in the meta-analysis. However, the roles of Conscientiousness and Neuroticism showed some cultural variation: European samples tended to show a stronger Conscientiousness-prejudice link, while North American samples sometimes showed a slightly stronger Neuroticism link. This suggests that while the primary personality-prejudice pathways are relatively universal, local cultural values can amplify or suppress the influence of specific traits.

What are the most effective prejudice reduction strategies based on this personality research?

The most evidence-supported prejudice reduction strategies target the mediating attitudes (RWA and SDO) rather than personality traits directly, since traits are harder to change. Structured intergroup contact under positive, equal-status conditions consistently reduces both RWA-linked and SDO-linked bias. Perspective-taking exercises and diversity training that explicitly addresses dominance-justifying beliefs also show meaningful effects. At the individual level, deliberately cultivating curiosity, challenging ambiguity intolerance, and practicing empathy exercises have all been linked to measurable reductions in prejudiced attitudes over time.

Summary: What the Science of Bias Prejudice Personality Traits Means for You

The evidence from this large-scale meta-analysis of 71 studies and more than 22,000 participants is both sobering and genuinely encouraging. Bias prejudice personality traits are meaningfully connected — but the connection is not a sentence. Low Openness to Experience tends to foster prejudice by raising Right-Wing Authoritarianism, while low Agreeableness tends to do so by raising Social Dominance Orientation. These 2 pathways are robust across cultures and age groups, while traits like Extraversion and Neuroticism play a far smaller role. The critical insight is that personality shapes prejudice primarily through intermediary attitudes — and attitudes, unlike personality, are more directly open to change through education, contact, and deliberate reflection. Understanding your own personality profile is not an excuse or a verdict — it is a map. Use it to identify where your psychological vulnerabilities to bias may lie, and where your efforts to grow might have the most impact. If you want to take the next step, exploring how your own Big Five profile compares across these dimensions is a valuable place to begin.