Evaluating Presidential Candidates: Who Focuses on Their Personal Attributes?

This article shows that highly educated individuals are moreconcerned with personal attributes than less educated people.Moreover, both those at the high and low ends of the educationalladder express interest in trivial as well as important aspectsof candidates' attributes. Finally, personal attributes haveas large an impact on the vote of the best educated as on thevote of the least educated. These findings flatly contradictthe standard assumptions about the terms in which educated individualsevaluate presidential candidates.