Generosity shows important differences between people with leftist ideology, who tend to be more altruistic across borders, and those on the right, who are more generous and altruistic with the institutions of their own country.
A team of researchers came to this conclusion after carrying out a study in which they analyzed the responses of almost 50,000 people from 68 different countries, having published the results this Monday in the scientific journal Pnas.
The work was carried out by researchers from the IMT School of Advanced Studies in Lucca, the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University of Milan Bicocca.
The research was carried out during the months of April and May 2020 with the objective of examining the psychological factors that underlie the different attitudes and behavioral intentions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, to determine if political ideology is associated to generosity and how.
To measure political ideology, participants were asked to identify their political orientation on a scale of 0 (far left) to 10 (far right).
To measure generosity, the researchers used participants’ decisions to donate to a national or international charity.
The task was to answer what percentage of a sum of money people kept and how much they donated to a national or international charity working to protect people in the pandemic.
In this way, they established three different types of generosity: one focused on the country of origin, with local roots, called national generosity; the second, more universalist, directed beyond national borders and directed at the international community, called international generosity; and a third, the sum of the two, identified as generosity in general.
Those who leaned to the left were more likely to be generous internationally, while those to the right were more likely to give and help locally, the researchers found.
The study also pointed out that the tendency to be generous is also directly related to the good governance of each country.
Source: TSF
