Political ideologies as social strategies: does ideological variation predict behavioral variation in cooperative dilemmas?

Ideological research links liberal and conservative orientations to variations in genetic, psychological, and physiological factors. Yet, while a knowledge of the mechanistic causes of ideologies are advancing quickly, we know less about their potential functional causality. Here, we ask what the social functions of ideologies are and investigate whether the behaviors associated with different ideological orientations are consistent with different strategies for social interactions. We recruit an American sample of (N = 454) liberals and conservatives to complete two rounds of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Using a three-wave design, we obtain a sample of each ideological group that is comparable on multiple demographic factors. We hypothesize that a liberal orientation is underpinned by an approach-oriented social strategy that is directed towards pursuing cooperative opportunities, while a conservative orientation is underpinned by a social strategy directed towards avoiding loss. On multiple measures of ideology, we find evidence that liberals and conservatives differ in their: (1) initial cooperativeness; (2) overall cooperation; and, (3) forgiveness.