Objective Recently, researchers interested in the psychological antecedents of political behavior have started to integrate individual personality traits into models of political participation and civic engagement. Thus far, there have not been any large‐scale, cross‐national analyses of the relationship between personality and participation. In this article, I use data from representative surveys conducted in 24 countries to examine the influence of personality on political and civic participation. The analysis focuses on the influence of the Big Five traits, enabling tests of hypotheses (that have previously only been tested in a few countries) across diverse contexts. Methods I use logistic, Poisson, and ordered logit models to investigate the effects of the Big Five traits on a variety of measures of political and civic engagement, controlling for a number of demographic attributes previously connected to participation such as income and education. Results I find evidence that the effects of the Big Five vary considerably across countries. Conclusion The results presented here justify future research on personality‐environment interactions.