Personality Basis for Partisan News Media Use: Openness to Experience and Consumption of Liberal News Media

Abstract

This study explores the link between Openness to Experience (one dimension of the Big Five personality traits) and attitude-challenging news media use (crosscutting exposure). Two distinctive behavioral tendencies of Openness (political affinity toward liberal ideals vs. tolerance to political differences) allow us to propose two equally possible, but mutually exclusive, hypotheses regarding the association between Openness and crosscutting exposure. Two American National Election Study surveys conducted during the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections were used to test the competing hypotheses. Across the two elections, a positive link between Openness and liberal news media use was found regardless of self-reported party identification. Openness promoted attitude-consistent news media use (selective exposure) among Democrats, whereas it encouraged crosscutting exposure among Republicans. Our findings suggest the distinction between "selective" and "crosscutting" exposure based on one's party identification may mask the common foundation that influences exposure decisions to partisan news media.