Does Openness to Experience predict changes in conservatism? A nine-wave longitudinal investigation into the personality roots to ideology

Although Openness to Experience correlates negatively with conservatism, recent studies question the assumption that personality precedes political attitudes. We contribute to this debate by using nine annual waves of a nation-wide longitudinal panel study (N = 17,207) to investigate the temporal ordering of Openness to Experience and conservatism. Although cross-lagged panel models suggest that Openness to Experience predicts decreases in conservatism, analyses that properly separate between-person stability from within-person change find no evidence to suggest that personality precedes ideology (or vice-versa). These findings raise concerns about a critical assumption in the literature and suggest that personality and political ideology develop in parallel with one another, rather than personality causally preceding conservatism. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.