Linking personality and policy: The moderating roles of cues and frames

Abstract The mechanisms by which personality shapes political attitudes are underexplored. We examine the interplay among dispositional openness, political engagement, and elite discourse in the context of two key processes that shape public opinion generally: elite cue‐taking and policy framing. In Study 1, we examine the extent to which the presence or absence of partisan cues moderates the relationship between openness and policy preferences. In Study 2, we examine the extent to which personality‐targeted policy frames moderate this relationship. We find strong evidence that partisan cues increase the strength of the relationship between openness and policy preferences. We find suggestive evidence that the size of the moderating effect of party cues increases as a function of political engagement. We find no evidence for a moderating role of personality‐targeted frames. Our paper provides some of the strongest evidence to date for how and when elite discourse shapes the relationship of personality to political attitudes.