Charity, game theory, politics & religion: More on impartial altruism and political views

First up: charity, politics, and religion, then stay tuned for game theory, cooperation, and politics.

In my previous post, I looked at data suggesting that kidney donors are more likely to be leftwing in a sample of Scott Alexanders readers. My purpose was to assess the hypothesis that a key psychological difference between the left and right is impartial altruism- that is, altruism to strangers, and those you barely know. I believe this tends to characterize the left quite generally.

Kidney donation is, however, a rare and exceptional act of altruism. What about something more mundane like donating money? In his 2020 reader survey, Scott asked respondents how much they had donated to charity. Thus our research question- do leftwing views correlate with charitable giving in this sample?

Many, many people either did not respond to the question about income, or the question about charity, I discarded these respondents from the sample.

Prior research has found that religion leads to much greater giving and religion is, of course, strongly related to political views. I will deal with the sample in two components. The areligious, who I defined as those saying they were atheists and not spiritual, and those saying they are agnostics, and a religious comparison group- for the purposes of this study, those self-describing as committed theists.

Now, the results. Areligious leftwinger’s median giving is 0.48% of their income, and areligious rightwinger’s median giving is 0.28% of their income. A huge difference suggesting a substantial psychological gap to be sure, but somewhat overwhelmed by the religious givers. Leftwing committed theists gave, on average, 3.9% of their income, and rightwing committed theists gave, on average 6.4% of their income in the sample.

Why is the order of who donates the most reversed among the religious? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because the rightwing committed theists are, on average, more committed to theism than committed theist leftwingers. I doubt there’s an interaction effect where the same very high-level theism inspires more altruism if you’re rightwing, but I could be wrong. It may also relate to differences in how much leftish versus rightish churches/synagogues/mosques etc. expect in donations.

The charity of the religious is real, and in no way do I intend to deny it, but it is hard, in many respects, to compare to the charity of the areligious. In some ways, money donated to your place of worship is like a fee for a service, and it is strongly expected. It would be good to try and examine the charity of the religious versus non-religious- and its interrelation with political orientation, in a de-novo context. Simply asking about donations to non-religious organizations only doesn’t seem fair to the religious.

I propose an experimental test. There is a game called the impunity game. The impunity game is similar to the dictator game, but a little different. Player X is given a sum of money and told to divide it between themselves and Player Y. They may choose any division they like, including taking all the money for themselves. Player Y simply has to take what they’re given. It is the best experimental test of altruism towards strangers I know of, but at present, it does not look like anyone has used it to discriminate between the left and the right.

Speaking of game theory

In our sample, there was a large relationship between defecting in the prisoner’s dilemma and being rightwing. For theoretical reasons, we would expect behavior in the prisoner’s dilemma toward strangers. Behavior in the game did affect real strangers- here is the question:

Choose either "cooperate" or "defect". I will randomly select two people to play the game. If they both cooperate, they will both get $500. If one person cooperates and the other defects, the defector will get $1000. If they both defect, they will both get $100.

Previous research has found a relationship between rightwing political views and defecting in the prisoner’s dilemma. As stated, this was very strongly replicated in the sample- in fact I think more strongly replicated than in many other studies (at least some of which have found no relationship), and with a massive number of respondents, far too large to be a statistical fluke.

Between a response of 1 and 10, the probability of defecting triples.

I have a strong suspicion that relationships between political views and certain other psychological features- like defecting in the prisoner's dilemma-may be stronger in this sample than many others. Scott’s readers are people who spend a lot of time thinking about ideas. Perhaps it’s more likely they’ll align their politics with their values, and/or align their values with their politics, than other experimental participants such as first-year psychology students?

Interestingly, being religious also has a big impact on your tendency to defect. Religious people, whether rightwing or leftwing, are less likely to defect, the effect is largish, though nowhere near as large as the effect on charitable giving. There is no important interaction effect, being religious just subtracts from your likelihood of defecting, whatever your political views. Results (probability of not defecting):

Areligious leftwing: 0.735

Areligious rightwing: 0.630

Religious leftwing: 0.819

Religious rightwing: 0.730

All of this seems consistent with a view that sees religion, particularly modern universalistic religions, as approaches to ‘taming’ tribalistic, family and self-centered ethics- right-wing temperaments- and replacing them with universalism. I’ve always been pretty sympathetic to Christianity, and broadly speaking, sad that it seems to be going the way of Tolkien’s elves. To quote Ross Douhat:

If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.

Conclusions

The bulk of evidence over the last two posts, I think, tends to support the idea of an association between impartial altruism and leftwing views among Scott’s readers, minding the complexities of religion. This combines with a fair bit of previous research on the issue to make the connection quite plausibly a wider phenomenon. A good study of revealed preference for altruism and political alignment using something like the impunity game would be welcome.

The causal status of the relationship is unclear but also plausible. From a leftwing view, anything that might promote psychological tendencies to impartial altruism (anyone got any ideas?) might be welcome. MDMA? Metta Bhavana meditation?

As the Owl of Minerva seems to spread its wings over Christianity I find it often in my thoughts:

“Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor.” (Zechariah 7:10)

“But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.””