Registered Report: Testing Ideological Asymmetries in Measurement Invariance

People with different ideological identities differ in their values, personality, affect, and psychological motivations. These differences are observed on measures of practical and clinical importance and these differences are the central node tying together theories about the psychology of political ideology; however, they rest on a critical untested assumption: The measures are invariant across ideological groups. Here, we test this assumption across 28 constructs in data from the United States and the Netherlands. Measures are not invariant across ideological divisions. At the same time, estimates of ideological similarities and differences are largely similar before and after correcting for measurement noninvariance. This may give us increased confidence in the results from this research area, while simultaneously highlighting that some instance of noninvariance did change conclusions and that individual items are not always comparable across political groups.