Study finds prosocial behavior predicts shifts in political views

A recent study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that people’s tendency to act in cooperative and generous ways may influence their political views in the long run. Researchers found that individuals who exhibited greater prosocial behavior in economic decision-making tasks were more likely to develop political attitudes favoring social equality and income redistribution over time. However, the reverse was not true—political views did not appear to shape later prosocial tendencies.

Political attitudes often seem deeply ingrained, shaped by upbringing, social context, and media exposure. However, growing research suggests that these beliefs might also be connected to more fundamental psychological traits. Some scholars have argued that political ideology is partly rooted in dispositional factors such as sensitivity to threats, need for certainty, or preferences for social hierarchy.

One aspect of personality that has received less attention in political psychology is prosociality—the tendency to act in ways that benefit others, even at a personal cost. Prior research has linked prosociality to political beliefs in cross-sectional studies, meaning researchers have observed correlations between these traits at a single point in time. However, it has remained unclear whether prosociality causes people to adopt certain political views or whether political views shape prosocial behavior.

To explore this question, the researchers used a longitudinal approach, tracking participants over time to determine whether prosocial behavior predicted changes in political attitudes or vice versa.

“People differ widely in their political beliefs, but the reasons for this variation are not well understood,” said study author Scott Claessens, a research associate at the University of Kent, who conducted the study while a research fellow at the University of Auckland.

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“In our study, we explored the link between people’s political beliefs and their prosocial preferences: the extent to which people are willing to benefit others at a cost to themselves. Prior research has already shown that left-wing people are more prosocial, but it is not clear whether this is just a statistical association or whether prosocial preferences play a causal role in the expression of political beliefs.”

The study was based on data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a large ongoing survey. A total of 631 participants, aged between 24 and 71, completed two waves of data collection, spaced 18 months apart.

To measure political views, participants completed surveys assessing their stance on income redistribution, their level of Social Dominance Orientation (which reflects support for hierarchical social structures), and their support for New Zealand’s center-right National Party.

Prosocial behavior was measured using a series of economic games. These games involved real financial stakes and were designed to assess how willing participants were to share resources, cooperate with others, and act in ways that benefit the collective good. The games included:

• The Dictator Game, in which one participant decides how much of a given sum to share with another person.
• The Trust Game, where participants can transfer money to another player, with the understanding that the amount will be multiplied before the recipient decides how much to return.
• The Public Goods Game, where participants choose how much of their money to contribute to a communal fund that benefits the whole group.

These games provided an objective measure of each person’s overall prosocial orientation, known as the “prosocial phenotype.” By examining how prosocial behavior and political views changed over time, the researchers were able to determine whether one influenced the other.

The study revealed a one-way relationship: prosocial tendencies predicted political beliefs, but political beliefs did not predict prosocial tendencies. Specifically, people who displayed more prosocial behavior in the first wave of data collection were more likely to shift toward lower Social Dominance Orientation 18 months later. They also tended to show greater support for income redistribution over time. However, the reverse was not true—having certain political views at the start of the study did not predict changes in prosocial behavior later on.

Interestingly, prosocial behavior did not consistently predict changes in all political beliefs. There was no strong evidence that it influenced participants’ views on income attribution (beliefs about whether wealth is earned through hard work or external factors) or their support for the conservative National Party. This suggests that prosocial tendencies may shape attitudes toward economic equality but are less relevant to broader party preferences or beliefs about personal responsibility.

“Our longitudinal study suggests that prosocial preferences may have a causal influence on certain political beliefs,” Claessens told PsyPost. “Over an eighteen month period, we found that changes in people’s prosocial preferences preceded changes in people’s political views on hierarchy and redistribution. People who became more prosocial over the course of the study were subsequently less likely to support hierarchical social arrangements and were more likely to support income redistribution.”

Additionally, the link between prosocial behavior and later political views was more pronounced for men and for people of European descent. This pattern may be due to differences in baseline levels of Social Dominance Orientation or differences in how much room people’s political views had to shift over time.

While the study provides evidence that prosocial behavior can shape certain political beliefs, it is not without limitations. Because the study only included two waves of data, it could not fully account for the long-term stability of these traits. Future research incorporating additional time points could provide a more detailed picture of how these relationships develop over years or even decades.

“This study was conducted in New Zealand, so it remains to be seen whether these findings will replicate in other countries,” Claessens noted. “The statistical effects were also relatively small, suggesting that prosocial preferences may only play a modest causal role in the expression of political beliefs compared to other factors like religion, upbringing, and political polarization.”

The study, “Prosocial Phenotype Predicts Political Views on Hierarchy and Redistribution 18 Months Later,” was authored by Scott Claessens, Chris G. Sibley, Ananish Chaudhuri, and Quentin D. Atkinson.