Openness to Experience, Honesty–Humility and ideological attitudes: A fine-grained analysis

• Openness and Honesty–Humility narrow traits differently predict ideology.
• Openness-Curiosity, not Openness-Cultural, is uniquely related with RWA.
• Humility is negatively linked with SDO and RWA; Honesty positively predicts RWA.
• Interest in politics strengthen the Humility-SDO and Openness Curiosity-RWA links.
• Narrow traits effects on RWA are only in small part mediated by Need for Closure.

We aimed at replicating and extending recent findings about the relationships between the specific aspects entailed by Honesty–Humility and Openness to Experience and ideological attitudes. Study 1 (N = 820) indicated that Openness-Curiosity, not Openness-Cultural, was uniquely associated with Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and that Humility, not Honesty, was uniquely related to Social Dominance Orientation. Divergent effects on RWA were identified for Honesty (positive) and Humility (negative). Study 2 (N = 586) replicated further these results and investigated the moderating role of interest in politics, and the mediating role of Need for Closure in shaping the pattern of associations. Openness-Curiosity and Humility were related to ideological attitudes mostly in a direct way, and these associations were strengthened by interest in politics.