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In this paper, we examine how the relationship between authoritarianism and partisanship is conditioned by education. Arguing against perspectives suggesting that authoritarianism is the province of the 'unsophisticated,' we hypothesize that the relationship between education and Republican partisanship should be stronger among educated Americans. Moreover, going beyond previous work on how education may moderate the political impact of psychological dispositions, we also argue that partisan signals pertinent to authoritarianism come more strongly from the right, producing a pattern in which the positive relationship between authoritarianism and preference for the Republican Party over independence is stronger among the educated but the negative relationship between authoritarianism and preference for the Democratic Party over independence is not stronger among the educated. Data from the 2004 and 2008 American National Election Studies indicate clear support for both hypotheses. Adapted from the source document.

Research connecting sociopolitical attitudes to personality typically relies exclusively on self‐report measures of personality. A recently discovered mechanism of bias in self‐reports highlights a particular challenge for this approach. Specifically, individuals tend to report exaggerated levels of a trait to the extent that they view that trait as desirable. In a community sample of 443 participants, differences in sociopolitical attitudes were associated with differences in the extent to which individuals provided biased self‐reports for a given trait (relative to trait levels indicated by peer‐report or an objective measure) as well as differences in views of the desirability of that trait. Further, the tendency to misrepresent traits in a manner consistent with one's sociopolitical attitudes was mediated by differences in views of trait desirability. Thus, although meaningful personality differences exist among those with differing sociopolitical attitudes, those differences may not be as large as people with opposing sociopolitical attitudes might like them to be.