Political Ideology and Social Class: An Investigation into the  Effects on Prosocial Behavior

Research has found significant effects of social class on prosocial behavior, but diverging findings for the influence of political ideology. In this study, the aim was to find out whether ideology influences prosociality towards people of a low or a high social class. This was investigated by conducting an online experiment with liberals and conservatives (N = 294), where they engaged in the social mindfulness (SoMi) task, which served as a measure for prosocial behavior. For the SoMi task, the participants were told to imagine they had an interaction partner who was either of a low social class or high social class. My hypotheses for this research were that liberals would treat targets of a low social class more prosocially than conservatives (H1), that conservatives would treat targets of a high social class more prosocially than liberals (H2) and that the tendencies towards low-class targets would be mediated by perceptions of deservingness and compassion towards them (H3)....Show moreResearch has found significant effects of social class on prosocial behavior, but diverging findings for the influence of political ideology. In this study, the aim was to find out whether ideology influences prosociality towards people of a low or a high social class. This was investigated by conducting an online experiment with liberals and conservatives (N = 294), where they engaged in the social mindfulness (SoMi) task, which served as a measure for prosocial behavior. For the SoMi task, the participants were told to imagine they had an interaction partner who was either of a low social class or high social class. My hypotheses for this research were that liberals would treat targets of a low social class more prosocially than conservatives (H1), that conservatives would treat targets of a high social class more prosocially than liberals (H2) and that the tendencies towards low-class targets would be mediated by perceptions of deservingness and compassion towards them (H3). Although these hypotheses could not be confirmed, there was a significant effect of target class on social mindfulness, indicating that lower-class targets elicited more prosocial behavior than higher-class targets, in line with previous research. In addition to that, political ideology had a significant effect on social mindfulness when controlling for age, which showed that those identifying as very liberal acted more prosocially than those identifying as conservative.Show less

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Political Ideology and Social Class: An Investigation into the Effects on Prosocial Behavior