How Political Ideology Shapes Prosocial Consumer Behavior Research
The current research suggests that there is a lack of political diversity in the stimuli used in prosocial consumer behavior research, which may pose challenges for the reliability and generalizability of such work. We review prosocial consumer behavior research from the leading marketing journals across twenty years and show that the study stimuli therein exhibit a consistent liberal skew. In a survey of contemporary prosocial consumer behavior researchers, we identify that the political beliefs of researchers and bias against conservative cause areas likely explain the observed political skew of stimuli in prosocial consumer research. Finally, three lab studies (N=2,008) demonstrate that unacknowledged political valence of prosocial stimuli and the unmeasured political beliefs of participants can distort estimates of the relationship between individual differences and donation if not accounted for in a thoughtful manner. This work contributes to the literature on prosocial consumer behavior by identifying a bias in stimuli selection that has likely hampered our understanding of the full nature of prosocial consumer behavior.
Prosocial Behavior, Political Ideology, Charitable Giving