Recently, a burgeoning literature has developed around the idea that personality traits influence political attitudes and orientations. There has also been increasing recognition that orientations like the sense of civic duty exert a powerful influence on voting behavior. Despite the theoretical and empirical importance of civic duty, little research has investigated its antecedents. This article turns to individual personality traits as a potential explanation for why some people feel a stronger sense of civic duty than others. The analysis shows that a number of the Big Five traits shape an individual’s sense of civic duty, with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness having statistically significant (p < .05) effects. The effects of personality traits rival and, in some cases, exceed the influence of variables that have typically been used to explain the sense of duty, including income. In the end, this study provides new evidence that personality traits influence broad orientations toward political life.