Key Findings: Political and Social Attitudes and Behaviors

Political attitudes, participation, and preferences have been top of mind for many in recent months given the 2024 elections. Understanding what factors influence political attitudes and beliefs is of particular importance, especially in today's polarized political climate. For example, insights into how individuals' political attitudes change could help foster dialogue and understanding across political divides. Or understanding what motivates people to engage politically could inform interventions to increase voter turnout and other democratic participation.

The correlation between income and many political attitudes and behaviors is well established, yet whether income directly causes changes to political preferences is less clear. The OpenResearch Unconditional Cash Transfer Study offered a unique opportunity to study the causal effects of income on political attitudes and behaviors. Non-profit organizations gifted 1,000 low-income adults in the U.S. $1,000 per month and 2,000 control participants $50 per month for three years. Since the cash transfers did not come from the government but were randomly assigned, we could study the direct effect of the cash itself on political and social outcomes. Here are key findings, based on data from longitudinal surveys, voter registration and turnout from administrative records, and five rounds of semi-structured in-depth interviews.

Key findings

On average, we find that a non-government sponsored unconditional cash transfer had limited impact on most political outcomes, with a few notable exceptions. On average:

Political preferences and attitudes largely do not change.
We observe no significant changes in political dispositions such as trust in government, political polarization, and support for democracy with the exception of an increase in favorability towards one’s incumbent governor.
No effects on political participation or engagement.
Increased positive attitudes toward one’s own racial group and other racial groups.

Implications

These findings highlight how deeply rooted political beliefs can be, suggesting that people’s political preferences and tendencies are long-lasting and resistant to change.

Our findings show that people’s political beliefs and behaviors are remarkably stable. Even when participants received a significant income boost—$12,000 more per year for three years—their political views and actions, including voting, party loyalty, policy opinions, trust in institutions, and support for democracy, did not significantly change. This aligns with prior research showing that many political beliefs take shape early in life and tend to stay the same over time, even when life circumstances change.¹

Qualitative interviews also reflect this. During interviews, when discussing their political involvement or views on policies, both recipients and control participants provided similar explanations regarding their level of political engagement. For example, participants across both groups who were politically engaged more often described engagement at the local level rather than national level. For participants who became more politically engaged during the transfer period, many drew connections between their political participation and factors unrelated to the cash, such as their social networks. One recipient told us how she met a friend while volunteering at a health clinic. The friend was politically active and introduced her to their social circles. She told us, “This is not something that I thought I'd ever do, but I started going to political events, which has been interesting. And kind of like meeting people that I never thought that I would just sit down and have a drink with or whatever.”

For participants who had been politically involved in the past but reported decreasing engagement, many described that politics have become too stressful and expressed a desire to minimize stress from this input. One recipient explained, “When I was in college especially, I would really kind of stress out about politics and think about them a lot. But as I've gotten older and perhaps because life has changed me a little, I don't know. I feel like I am less concerned and or interested in what's on the news and what's going on on a higher level, but I'm much more interested in what conversations I'm having with my kids and with my … with the people in my community.”

Participants in both groups who were disengaged politically or actively avoiding politics offered a number of reasons for their lack of participation. Most commonly: fear and/or frustration with the perceived divisiveness of the current political climate, disillusionment with politics, lack of cognitive bandwidth to engage with politics even if desired, and a lack of political knowledge without the resources (time, energy, or social ties) to increase their knowledge. One recipient explained, “It's just too much. There's too much going on nowadays, like between social media and the government and just people losing their minds in general…There's just too much anger, and rage, and hostility…I don't deal with the outside world like that anymore. I've decided that my personal peace is more important than any of the crap going on outside the walls of my mind.”

Almost universally, recipients stated that their political participation did not change as a result of the transfer.

Although the cash does not have a significant impact on people’s political preferences, there are a few exceptions we observe in the data.

We find the cash increased favorability towards one’s incumbent governor.

This effect was larger for participants in Illinois and in states with Democratic governors (taking into consideration some participants moved during the program) compared to Texas and states with Republican governors. Though it is not entirely clear why the cash would have led to this increase, considering no effect of the cash on voter turnout, one possible explanation is mood misattribution. Mood misattribution suggests that when people are in a better mood–in this case because they are receiving unconditional cash–they are more likely to feel positively about re-electing incumbents even if the reason for their better mood has nothing to do with the incumbent.²

Similar to the increased positive attitudes toward one’s governor, we also find increased positive attitudes toward other racial groups and one’s own racial group.

We asked participants to indicate on a "feelings thermometer" their attitudes about their own racial group and other racial groups. We find small (approximately 2 on a 0-100 scale) but statistically significant increases in recipients’ feelings thermometer scores towards both their own and other racial groups. As explained above, mood attribution theory suggests that recipients’ improved moods resulted in feeling more positively about their own racial group and other racial groups, in addition to the positive sentiments about their governor. These findings imply that economic conditions can shape people's political and social views by affecting their overall mood and emotions, even when those economic changes aren't blamed or credited to specific politicians or institutions.

These exceptions aside, the lack of effects we observed on political preferences and participation suggest that the impact of government transfers found in previous studies likely stems from factors beyond the income increase itself. For example, if people attribute responsibility of their increased income to the government, it may be the case that the attribution is what is actually causing changes to political preferences rather than the increased income itself.^{3 4 5} Similarly, economic shocks tied to government actions—such as layoffs during economic downturns—have been shown to influence various political dispositions. Our findings support the idea that it’s these additional features of economic shocks, such as blaming government actions, rather than direct changes in income that drive changes to political dispositions.

We find that even in the face of meaningful changes in economic circumstances, people’s political preferences and behaviors are hard to change.