Altruistic kidney donation initiators are less than half as likely to be right-wing as controls in an online sample
Introduction
I have a longstanding hypothesis that the strongest psychological mediator, on an individual level, of leftwing politics is impartial altruism. That is altruism directed towards strangers and acquaintances, as opposed to friends and family.
The most natural test of impartial altruism is charitable giving. There have been various attempts to study how politics relates to charitable giving. A frequent confound is that right-wingers are more likely to donate to religious charities, but the motives for donating to these charities are very different from typical impartial giving. Also, wealth and income are related to leftwing and rightwing attitudes, as is age, both of which affect giving for all sorts of reasons, etc. etc. More research is needed.
So when I became aware of a reasonably large sample of people who had given their kidneys to others, I thought this might be an excellent test. The underlying population is unusual (readers of Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten blog) but it’s an interesting opportunity.
Methods
Thanks to Scott Alexander for the data- see here.
To maximize the sample size, I looked at everyone who had commenced the kidney donation process, even if they did not complete it, or were still going. This included everyone who:
Is currently going through the process
Have already donated a kidney
Have gone through some of the process but dropped out voluntarily
Have went through some of the process but were rejected
The comparison group was those who said they were not interested in Kidney donation. We excluded those who were interested but had not yet started the process, and those who left the question blank. A quick look at those who were interested but hadn’t started the process suggested they were substantially to the left of those not interested, but not quite as far as those who had initiated the process- unsurprising.
Results
15/105 respondents who had initiated the process of Kidney donation were rightwing (14%) on the political spectrum (score 6 or above). In comparison, 35% of the 4031 respondents not interested in kidney donation were rightwing. P < 0.0001
Those who have gone through at least some of the process of Kidney donation, then, are about 2.5 times less likely to be rightwing compared to those with no interest in Kidney donation. While the sample of donors and donor process initiators is small, it is large enough for the effect to be very much statistically significant, given the effect size.
What if we look at clearly right-wing ideologies versus clearly left-wing ideologies? I classified the alt-right, neoreaction and conservatism as clearly rightwing. I classified Marxism and social democracy as clearly leftwing. This excludes two additional ideologies: libertarianism and liberalism which many people feel, can be either left or right. 7 respondents who had initiated the donation process subscribed to clearly rightwing philosophies. 43 respondents who had initiated the donation process belonged to clearly leftwing philosophies. By contrast, among the non-donors, there were 582 respondents subscribing to clearly rightwing philosophies and 1200 subscribing to clearly leftwing philosophies- a strong difference in odds ratios, and significant despite the small sample.
If we instead bite the bullet and code liberalism as leftwing and libertarianism as rightwing, we get: 18 versus 86 in favour of leftwing ideologies in the kidney donation initiation group and 1440 versus 2517 in the not interested group- greatly significant.
Discussion
One suggestion worth considering is that there are many altruistic right-wingers, but they tend to be religious, meaning they’re absent from this sample, which is very non-religious because it’s gathered around a ‘rationalist’ blog. There weren’t really enough religious people in the sample to test this, given the low baseline of kidney donation.
Although given the subculture’s emphasis on altruistic kidney donation, it is likely that kidney donors are engaging in impartial altruism, it is also possible that a significant number of kidney donors were donating to family or close friends. If so, this may suggest that leftwingers are more altruistic to some combination of both family and strangers than rightwingers, or that the gap may become even more stark when non-impartial donation is excluded. We need data that specifically excludes donations to family and close friends.
It’s also worth noting that donating or even commencing the process of donating a kidney is a truly exceptional act of altruism. At more normal levels of altruism, it may be that the left and right are more evenly matched.
While I believe the negative relationship between impartial altruism and right-wing views is directly causal, I cannot demonstrate this using such simple correlational data, of course. Still, the relationship is of interest whether directly causal or not, especially given the considerable effect size (such ratios between conceptually distinct variables are rare in the social sciences).
If impartial altruism is a leading psychological driver of being leftwing, hypotheses that see the difference as arising from different factual assessments (e.g. about the effectiveness of welfare) should be challenged. Political differences may, to a substantial degree, represent different desires and non-instrumental preferences, e.g. for self versus other.
The limitations in inferring from this unusual sample to the larger population are obvious, but the results are at least suggestive, thus we end in the style of all psychology research everywhere: further research is needed.
A proper study, controlling for age, religiosity gender, tertiary education and income on a large and more diverse group of Kidney donation initiators donating exclusively to strangers would be welcome.
I think there are some big problems with this analysis (some of which you mentioned but I think you understated them).
First, on ACX moral/selfless leftists like utilitarians are VASTLY overrepresented compared to selfish leftists like feminists. Additionally and conversely, selfish rightists like libertarians are VASTLY overrepresented compared to moral/selfless rightists like Christians. You acknowledged one part of this, that the least selfish part of the right is the least represented part, but it's *also* the case that the most selfish part of the right is the most represented part (compared to more ambiguous parts of the right like nationalists and populists), and it's *also* the case that the most selfish part of the left is the least represented part, and it's *also* the case that the least selfish part of the left is the most represented part (compared to more ambiguous parts of the left like socialists and social democrats). I'm categorising selfish/selfless based on the type of language typically used by these movements, e.g. how many times phrases like "I want", "I demand", "my body", "my money", "my rights", and so on are used in their protests and rhetoric, versus how many times they use words like "moral" and "ethical" and advocate subordinating self-interest to the good of society. So the sample is pretty much as biased as possible to getting this result.
Second, you haven't analysed how the strength of left-right belief correlates to altruism: altruists might, for example, be more likely to be 5s than 1s and more likely to be 10s than 6s, even if they're more likely to be "1-5"s than "6-10"s. You haven't disproven that, and no offence intended but your very explicit left-wing views make me a little bit suspicious of cherry-picking without that. (Only a little; this isn't a sarcastic way of saying you're completely untrustworthy).
Third, if you're going to discount the standard results showing conservatives give more on the basis that they're more likely to give to churches, wouldn't you need to also consider that progressives are probably more likely to give to artistic groups and educational institutions? Especially since typically churches use a fair amount of their money on some sort of charity (whether effective or not) while e.g. operas and theatre groups are pretty much by definition using all their donations on producing entertainment for rich people. It gets even worse if you're excluding religious charities (not churches) like World Vision.
Your point about the sample is most relevant. Anyone religious who responds to the survey is likely to be an outlier.