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.
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.
Thanks for putting this together, most people don't take the time! I've got another potential confounder to add to the pile (sorry about that, you picked a pretty complex subject). ACX has explicitly endorsed kidney donations multiple times, had one himself, and talked about how he personally felt they were a morally upright thing to do, at little cost to oneself. As such, the survey may be accidentally measuring how likely a respondent is to agree with or respect ACX, not their baseline impartial altruism. It's a similar confound to religion, unfortunately. Is it really impartial altruism if a preacher you deeply respect just spent 2 hours convincing you how excellent and fulfilling it is to donate to charity? Maybe, but there are clearly other things at play here.
(Confession: as a survey-taker who was outside the median population of the audience in a couple ways—) I would be most curious about the relevance of status of respondent’s family over anything else. Seems like the most obvious possible confounding variable; ie, a baseline interest in kidney donation among readers of Scott’s story, but right wing readers (hypothetically) more likely to have kids, left wing skewing less likely; ergo for risk aversion or sheer logistics reasons less willingness to embark on donation among a population that has needy dependents.
>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.
Even discounting the sample issues others have raised, there are some confounders going on here that you mightn't have noticed.
1) Conservatism tends to preach that it's best not to muck with things. Donating a kidney is mucking with things. One would expect this heuristic to have an effect separate from any altruism effect, so kidney-donation might not be the best barometer of altruism when varying levels of conservatism are involved.
There are probably two very different forms of "impartial altruism": 1) heightened sensitivity to feelings of sympathy, and 2) tendency toward abstraction of values.
In the first variant, some people are emotionally affected by stories or thoughts of strangers suffering -- so the bar is low enough to treat strangers like family. In the second variant, people are perhaps more insensitive to sympathy than usual but they really want to be good (i.e., the sympathy bar is so high that not even family meets it so you don't give family special treatment).
I wish Scott included an option for: "I'd donate a kidney but only to a family member or a very good friend". I think a lot of people would fall into this category.
After reading this I decided to do a bit of data analysis on this question. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to post images in the comments, so here is the link to the note I posted with the analysis/images:
So the largest demographic group of altruistic kidney donors is Orthodox Jews, who tend to be right wing politically in the US. I've heard they comprise something like 15-18% of altruistic kidney donors, although I couldn't find a definitive source to link to right now. You could probably contact the organization Renewal and see if they have any data they could share with you, they focus specifically on facilitating the donation process in the orthodox Jewish community. I personally have interviewed several Orthodox donors and recipients, and the head of Renewal, for an article I wrote once, so I'm familiar with some cases anecdotally. And my husband started the process after being matched, but was rejected for medical reasons. But saying it's primarily a left wing phenomenon based on ACX audience is definitely a skewed sample!
Much of this is so remote from my own impulses, I don't have much interest at the end of the day. I once almost "donated" my testes to population control (vasectomy). LONG ago, when I was potent. My motives WERE altruistic. I've since sired two children, who have already contributed well to the welfare of humanity.
You can rationalize anything, I guess. My kids and I ALL "lean right." Not real far, though. Their mother assures me she would have had them even without me (some other father).
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.
Thanks for putting this together, most people don't take the time! I've got another potential confounder to add to the pile (sorry about that, you picked a pretty complex subject). ACX has explicitly endorsed kidney donations multiple times, had one himself, and talked about how he personally felt they were a morally upright thing to do, at little cost to oneself. As such, the survey may be accidentally measuring how likely a respondent is to agree with or respect ACX, not their baseline impartial altruism. It's a similar confound to religion, unfortunately. Is it really impartial altruism if a preacher you deeply respect just spent 2 hours convincing you how excellent and fulfilling it is to donate to charity? Maybe, but there are clearly other things at play here.
(Confession: as a survey-taker who was outside the median population of the audience in a couple ways—) I would be most curious about the relevance of status of respondent’s family over anything else. Seems like the most obvious possible confounding variable; ie, a baseline interest in kidney donation among readers of Scott’s story, but right wing readers (hypothetically) more likely to have kids, left wing skewing less likely; ergo for risk aversion or sheer logistics reasons less willingness to embark on donation among a population that has needy dependents.
Hi, I'm one of your data points.
>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.
Even discounting the sample issues others have raised, there are some confounders going on here that you mightn't have noticed.
1) Conservatism tends to preach that it's best not to muck with things. Donating a kidney is mucking with things. One would expect this heuristic to have an effect separate from any altruism effect, so kidney-donation might not be the best barometer of altruism when varying levels of conservatism are involved.
2) Being single-kidneyed decreases one's kidney function (Scott said it's about 30%). Under normal circumstances this doesn't matter much, but if one projects a high likelihood of modern clean food and medicine going away within one's lifetime, the cost-benefit gets substantially worse (note also that the recipient could well have transplant rejection in this scenario). Predicting the apocalypse is a standard right-wing position (see e.g. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/ and https://everythingstudies.com/2019/03/01/the-tilted-political-compass-part-1-left-and-right/ ). Again, a confound - and one from a factual assessment, at that.
(For the record, while #2 may sound a little far-fetched it's significant in why I personally am not interested.)
There are probably two very different forms of "impartial altruism": 1) heightened sensitivity to feelings of sympathy, and 2) tendency toward abstraction of values.
In the first variant, some people are emotionally affected by stories or thoughts of strangers suffering -- so the bar is low enough to treat strangers like family. In the second variant, people are perhaps more insensitive to sympathy than usual but they really want to be good (i.e., the sympathy bar is so high that not even family meets it so you don't give family special treatment).
I wish Scott included an option for: "I'd donate a kidney but only to a family member or a very good friend". I think a lot of people would fall into this category.
After reading this I decided to do a bit of data analysis on this question. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to post images in the comments, so here is the link to the note I posted with the analysis/images:
https://substack.com/profile/19303065-o-h-murphy/note/c-54485281?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=bhqc9
So the largest demographic group of altruistic kidney donors is Orthodox Jews, who tend to be right wing politically in the US. I've heard they comprise something like 15-18% of altruistic kidney donors, although I couldn't find a definitive source to link to right now. You could probably contact the organization Renewal and see if they have any data they could share with you, they focus specifically on facilitating the donation process in the orthodox Jewish community. I personally have interviewed several Orthodox donors and recipients, and the head of Renewal, for an article I wrote once, so I'm familiar with some cases anecdotally. And my husband started the process after being matched, but was rejected for medical reasons. But saying it's primarily a left wing phenomenon based on ACX audience is definitely a skewed sample!
Much of this is so remote from my own impulses, I don't have much interest at the end of the day. I once almost "donated" my testes to population control (vasectomy). LONG ago, when I was potent. My motives WERE altruistic. I've since sired two children, who have already contributed well to the welfare of humanity.
You can rationalize anything, I guess. My kids and I ALL "lean right." Not real far, though. Their mother assures me she would have had them even without me (some other father).