A new study from UC San Diego's Rady School of Management finds Americans would rather hurt the cause they believe in than support the one they don’t when it comes to politics.
The study, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surveyed 3,876 people between the winter of 2019 and summer of 2022. Researchers assessed if participants were Republicans or Democrats and then asked if they preferred to add $1 to a donation going to the opposing political party, or subtract $1 from a donation going to their own party.
More than 70% of participants, regardless of their political affiliation, opted to not add a donation to the opposing political party, even though it meant hurting their own political party. The same was true when participants were asked to give money to pro-choice or pro-life causes as well as pro-gun control or anti-gun control causes.
"We believe one of the drivers of peoples' decision making in this context is their identity. To put it in a nutshell, we find that it's more harmful to one's identity to help the other side than to harm their own side," said Ariel Fridman who is joint-author of the study and a doctoral candidate in behavioral marketing at the UCSD Rady School of Management.
Fridman joined Midday Edition to discuss his findings and ways Americans can become less divided to achieve compromise and cooperation.
