Facing the Opposition: Personality and Engagement With Political Disagreement Across Contexts

Abstract: This study examines how personality is associated with the willingness to engage with opposing political views across two distinct contexts: interpersonal discussions and the media. Drawing on survey data from 1,340 Swiss–German participants, this study reveals that engagement with diverse political views is not solely shaped by stable personality traits but also by the characteristics of the informational context. Openness, for instance, shows a positive relationship with seeking controversial information in the media but not the interpersonal sphere, while extraversion is linked to a preference for controversial political discussions. Nevertheless, our results also point to a particular personality type, plasticity (i.e., shared variance of openness and extraversion), that seems to be more actively engaged in cross-cutting exposure across communication settings. In contrast, individuals high in stability (i.e., shared variance of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness) tend to be somewhat less engaged.