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"Education," notes Philip Converse, "is everywhere the universal solvent." Whatever the ill of the body politic, many believe that greater education improves the condition. Much scholarship explores the impact of education on political attitudes and behaviors, but scholars have not examined the relationship of education to support for political compromise. This is especially topical, as compromise between parties seems harder than ever to achieve, yet compromise is necessary for democratic governance. We examine whether higher levels of education lead to support for compromise and find that education does matter, but the relationship is conditional. For liberals and moderates, more education promotes greater support for compromise. For conservatives, those with more education are not more likely to support compromise than those with less education. We argue that for conservatives, education matters for compromise support, but it also leads to better understanding of bedrock ideological principles that inhibit approval of compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several years, and through different administrations, surveys have shown that self-identified liberals are more likely than self-identified conservatives to avoid interactions with and exposure to ideological disagreement. In this study, we demonstrate that this ideological asymmetry in outgroup avoidance can be partially explained by the well-established tendency of self-identified conservatives to hold moderate or liberal policy preferences. Using a nationally representative survey, we show that ideologically consistent conservatives look more like liberals (almost all of whom are ideologically consistent) in their tendency to engage in behaviors that promote ideologically homogeneous social networks. Inconsistent conservatives, on the other hand, are more likely to have ideologically heterogeneous social networks, making them less likely to clash with those on the other side and thus less likely to retreat from engagement, even if they hold conservative identities. This set of findings offers insight into the contours of polarization in contemporary America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]