The Politics of Intent: Political Ideology Influences Organ Donation Intentions

Abstract

The low supply of organs is a global concern. It is crucial to recognize the barriers, whether cognitive or emotional, that influence individuals' willingness to sign up onto organ donation registries. In the current investigation, we hypothesize that a politically-conservative ideology reduces people's organ donation intentions. This is likely since individuals with a conservative ideology care more about the integrity of the human body, are more disgusted by the very act of organ donations, and believe that signing onto such registries would be tempting fate. We test and confirm this possibility in a study with 148 Australians. The findings indicate that political ideology can be a predictor of individuals' likelihood of becoming organ donors.

Full text

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Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
The politics of intent: Political ideology influences organ donation intentions
Eugene Y. Chan
Monash Business School, Monash University, 26 Sir John Monash Dr., Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Political ideology
Organ donation intentions
Bodily integrity
Disgust
Tempting fate
ABSTRACT
The low supply of organs is a global concern. It is crucial to recognize the barriers, whether cognitive or
emotional, that influence individuals' willingness to sign up onto organ donation registries. In the current in-
vestigation, we hypothesize that a politically-conservative ideology reduces people's organ donation intentions.
This is likely since individuals with a conservative ideology care more about the integrity of the human body, are
more disgusted by the very act of organ donations, and believe that signing onto such registries would be
tempting fate. We test and confirm this possibility in a study with 148 Australians. The findings indicate that
political ideology can be a predictor of individuals' likelihood of becoming organ donors.
1. Introduction
The supply of organs available for transplantation is low, and so it is
a concern worldwide for medical doctors, public policy officials, poli-
ticians and political scientists, and psychologists alike (Moloney &
Walker, 2002). Many studies have historically focused on the cognitive
barriers that lower organ donation intentions (Bresnahan et al., 2007;
Sheppard, Hartwick, & Warshaw, 1988;Weber, Martin, & Corrigan,
2007). Other researchers have explored the roles of affective attitudes
and emotional reactions to the concept of donating organs upon one's
death (Doherty, Dolan, Flynn, O'Carroll, & Doyle, 2017;Morgan,
Stephenson, Harrison, Afifi, & Long, 2008;O'Carroll, Foster,
McGeechan, Sandford, & Ferguson, 2011). These results suggest that
affective barriers are as important as cognitive barriers to understand
why people are reluctant to sign onto organ donation registries.
Personality characteristics and/or individual differences might
predispose certain individuals to be more accepting of or opposed to
donating their organs (Demir & Kumkale, 2013). For example, Hill
(2016) found that agreeableness but not conscientiousness explains
attitudes and intentions about organ donations, and the link is ex-
plained by altruism. Meanwhile, Besser, Amir, and Barkan (2004) re-
ported that fears of death and authoritarianism reduce Israeli students'
likelihood of being organ donors. We approach the link between per-
sonality variables and intentions of donating one's organs differently.
Rather than examining particular traits relevant to organ donations, can
there be demographic segments that differ along these traits and so are
more or less likely of being organ donors? An answer to this question is
valuable as it predicts which segments of the population that are organ
donors and so targeted organ donation drives can be directed appro-
priately.
In particular, we explore the possibility that one's political ideology,
which plays a crucial role in determining personality (Jost, Nosek, &
Gosling, 2008;Schlenker, Chambers, & Le, 2012), may influence and
predict one's willingness to donate his or her organs. Namely, we hy-
pothesize that a conservative ideology should make individuals less
willing to donate organs upon death. To advance such a hypothesis, we
draw on the five affective factors that Morgan et al. (2008) identified
that influence organ donation intentions beyond traditional cognitive
factors, which are: (1) the perceived benefits of donating organs; (2)
perceived threats to the integrity of the human body; (3) perceived
medical distrust; (4) fears and disgust, or “ick”factors, which primarily
concern disgust with the idea of donating one's organs; and lastly, (5)
the perception that one would be tempting fate, or “jinx”factors.
Morgan et al. (2008) suggested that the last four attitudes may re-
present a single factor, but they treated them as separate (Table 3,p.
653). Other researchers have also treated the factors as separate
(Doherty et al., 2017;O'Carroll et al., 2011); likewise, in our research,
we treat them as distinct.
We believe that a conservative ideology should primarily reduce
organ donation intentions via perceived threats to bodily integrity, ick
factors, and jinx factors. First, consider integrity of the human body. A
desire to preserve bodily integrity is associated with the belief that a
person who has to endure eternity or be reincarnated without organs
would be precluded from the afterlife (Braun & Nichols, 1997;Parisi &
Katz, 1986;Rubens & Oleckno, 1998). It is indeed the case that con-
servatism is strongly associated with religious belief, but it also directly
relates to a greater adherence to social and sacred things, not violating
taboo, and moral as well as physical purity or sanctity (Fiske & Tetlock,
1997;Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009;Tetlock, 2003;Tetlock, Kristel,
Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000;Thorisdottir, Jost, Liviatan, & Shrout,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.12.022
Received 18 November 2017; Received in revised form 14 December 2018; Accepted 15 December 2018
E-mail address: Eugene.Chan@monash.edu.
Personality and Individual Differences xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
0191-8869/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Chan, E.Y., Personality and Individual Differences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.12.022

2007). All of these findings would suggest that a conservative in-
dividual would place more emphasis on bodily integrity.
Second, consider fears about organ donations and how its very act
may evoke the fundamental emotional reactions of disgust. Concerns
about having the human body mutilated and defiled are common
(Kopfman, Smith, Ah Yun, & Hodges, 1998;McConnell, 1999;Parisi &
Katz, 1986). These beliefs are also related to, but independent from,
perceived threats to bodily integrity (Morgan et al., 2008). Politically,
conservatives are motivated to avoid negative outcomes. Multiple stu-
dies have observed that conservatism is often the reaction to threats and
concerns in the environment (Feldman & Stenner, 1997;Jost et al.,
2007;Nail, McGregor, Drinkwater, Steele, & Thompson, 2009). More-
over, the disgust emotion is more apparent with conservatism, with
disgust evoking conservatism and vice versa (Inbar, Pizarro, Iyer, &
Haidt, 2012;Terrizzi, Shook, & McDaniel, 2013;Terrizzi, Shook, &
Ventis, 2010). These findings thus would suggest that a conservative
ideology might also be more afraid of, and disgusted by, organ dona-
tions. In short, they would see organ donations as “more icky.”
Finally, consider jinx factors that Morgan et al. (2008) defined as
those pertaining to irrational beliefs to signing up to donate their organs
would be “tempting fate”and bring about negative outcomes, such as
death, sooner. At the fundamental level, people even believe that it is
bad luck to even talk about death (Braun & Nichols, 1997). It is likely
that political conservatism would also play a role by heightening such
perceptions, beliefs, or expectations as they pertain to organ donations.
Political conservatism has been connected to greater superstitious
thinking and paranormal beliefs (Boshier, 1973;Heard & Vyse, 1998;
Tetlock et al., 2000). These indications would insinuate that con-
servatives may be more likely to see signing on organ donation re-
gistries as tempting fate and more likely to trigger physical harms much
earlier. Put differently, they may believe more in “jinx”factors asso-
ciated with organ donations.
This discussion—that conservatives are more focused on preserving
integrity of the human body, more fearful of and disgusted by organ
donations, and less willing to tempt fate—would suggest that in-
dividuals who subscribe to this political ideology should be less willing
to sign onto organ donation registries. It is unlikely that conservatism
might influence the other two factors (perceived benefits, medical
distrust) as there are no core political ideological differences that would
make one ideology react more to these factors. We test our thinking in
an experiment in which we measure political ideology and then ask
participants to indicate their intentions to donate their organs and also
their affective reactions to organ donations following Morgan et al.
(2008).
2. Method
2.1. Participants
We recruited 228 Australian students from upper-level management
courses (M
age
= 20.11 years old, S.D. = 1.87; 79 men, 149 women, 1
undisclosed gender). They received course credit in exchange for ap-
proximately 15 min of their time. They completed the study as the first
in a packet of other unrelated studies by other researchers inside the
college's behavioral laboratory. The participants met two criteria. First,
we recruited only students who indicated that they were not on
Australia's Organ Donor Register. Second, we recruited only those who
voted in the 2016 Australian federal election. We conducted the study
in the first semester of 2017. We received ethics approval from the
university's institutional review board.
We note that, in Australia, all citizens are obligated to vote by law.
Thus, although student participation in political elections is generally
low in other countries (Pacheco, 2008), our student sample here would
have experience with voting (at least at the federal level) and thus likely
are aware of their political beliefs and attitudes. Indeed, Australian
media and public polling agencies report often that young Australians
are interested in political issues, although they may not be experts in
political knowledge and current events (Ghazarian, Laughland-Booy, &
Skrbis, 2017).
2.2. Measures
Adapting from Doherty et al. (2017) and Morgan et al. (2008),we
measured organ donation intentions by asking participants to indicate
their response to the target statement, “I will register with the Aus-
tralian Organ Donor Register within the next six months”(1 = Very
Unlikely, 9 = Very Likely). We then used the same scale by Morgan
et al. (2008) to assess participants' attitudes toward organ donations in
the five domains of perceived benefits (four items α= 0.95), bodily
integrity (two items r= 0.95, p< .001), medical mistrust (four items
α= 0.94), ick factors (three items α= 0.79), and jinx factors (three
items α= 0.88), on separate 9-point measures from 1 = “Strongly
Disagree”to 9 = “Strongly Agree.”
Finally, students completed demographic questions, namely age,
gender, household income, religion, and race. Because we recruited a
student sample, individual income would likely be quite similar, and
thus we asked for their household income to increase variance. We also
asked students to identify their race, which we simply coded as
1=“white”or 2 = “other.”All students then indicated the political
party for which they voted in the 2016 Australian federal election. They
also self-reported their political ideology on 9-point scale from
1=“Very Liberal”to 9 = “Very Conservative.”This is a standard
unidimensional assessment that has been found to be substantively
predictive of a range of personality traits and behaviors (Jost et al.,
2008). Later, we will explain why we asked for party voted and self-
reported political ideology. Students were then fully debriefed and
dismissed. No one expressed suspicion about any part of this study.
3. Results
In Australia, the three dominant political parties are the Labors, the
Liberal Party of Australia, and the National Party of Australia. At the
state and federal levels, the Australian Labors occupy the left of the
political spectrum, while the Liberals and Nationals occupy the right
side (despite the name “Liberal”). In practice, the Liberals and Nationals
form a coalition at the state and federal levels, together formally
identified as the Liberal-National Coalition (LNC). Thus, we were pri-
marily interested in students who voted for either the Labors or the LNC
in the 2016 election. In total, 148 students did so, while 80 voted for
another party. We disregarded the data from these students. Among the
148 in the remaining dataset, the mean age was 20.01 years old with 46
men and 102 women. As well, 95 voted for the Labors, while 52 voted
for the LNC. Although this was not representative of the federal election
results on the whole, it is nonetheless consistent with how younger
people tend to be more liberal. Given that political ideology would
certainly be correlated with other factors, we controlled for age, gender,
household income level, religion, and race (Wright, Beaver, Morgan, &
Connolly, 2017).
3.1. By political party voted
We first found that LNC-supporting students were less willing to sign
up on the Australian Organ Donation Register (M= 6.06, S.D. = 2.88)
compared to Labor-supporting students (M= 7.39), F(1, 145) = 7.72,
p< .01, d= 0.46 (95% C.I.: 0.13, 0.79). This finding is consistent with
our theorizing.
Table 1 presents a correlation matrix between self-reported political
ideology, organ donation intentions, and the five affective attitudes
toward organ donations. All five affective attitudes correlate with one
another, consistent with Morgan et al.'s (2008) thesis that they would,
despite the authors treating them as separate factors. Other authors
similarly found that the five factors highly load onto one or two factors
E.Y. Chan Personality and Individual Differences xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
2

at most (O'Carroll et al., 2011) while still treating them as separate in
their analyses. We thus followed this approach.
We firstly conducted a repeated measures ANOVA to ascertain if
there are differences within five affective attitudes toward organ do-
nations depending on the political party that our participants sup-
ported. Mauchly's test indicated that sphericity assumptions had been
violated, χ
2
(9) = 109.40, p< .001, d= 1.92 (95% C.I.: 1.56, 2.28).
Since the obtained epsilon value was ε= 0.70 and less than 0.75, we
corrected for the degrees of freedom using Greenhouse-Geisser statis-
tics. There was a main effect of the within-participants factor, with
mean scores differing across all five attitudes, F(2.74,
398.31) = 204.02, p< .001, d= 1.43 (95% C.I.: 1.21, 1.65). This of-
fers some evidence that, while all five affective attitudes may be similar,
high scores on any factor may not necessarily imply high scores on
another factor. In support of this, crucially, the 2 × 5 interaction was
significant, F(2.74, 398.31) = 3.82, p= .047, d= 0.19 (95% C.I.:
−0.001, 0.39) which indicates that the affective reactions to organ
donations differed depending on the political party for which the stu-
dents voted.
Table 2 presents the results comparing liberals and conservatives on
all five affective attitudes. With regards to participants' perceived
benefits of donating organs upon death, LNC supporters scored equally
(M= 7.28, S.D. = 1.31) as Labor supporters (M= 7.22, S.D. = 1.54),
F= 0.06, p= .805. For perceived threats to bodily integrity, LNC
supporters scored higher (M= 3.14, S.D. = 2.40) than Labour suppor-
ters (M= 2.13, S.D. = 1.79), F(2.74, 398.31) = 8.26, p< .01. For
medical distrust, LNC supporters scored higher (M= 3.84, S.D. = 2.16)
than Labor supporters (M= 2.87, S.D. = 1.72), F(2.74, 398.31) = 8.72,
p< .01, d= 0.29 (95% C.I.: 0.09, 0.49). For ick factors, LNC suppor-
ters scored higher (M=3.18, S.D. = 2.17) than Labor supporters
(M= 2.45, S.D. = 1.96), F(2.74, 398.31) = 4.24, p= .041. Finally, for
jinx factors, LNC supporters scored higher (M= 2.75, S.D. = 1.83) than
Labor supporters (M= 2.15, S.D. = 1.49), F(2.74, 398.31) = 4.48,
p= .036, d= 0.21 (95% C.I.: 0.01, 0.40).
After, we conducted a mediation analysis, employing Model 4 of
Hayes' (2013) bootstrapping protocols for SPSS. Bootstrapping is a
stronger test than the Baron and Kenny (1986) and Sobel (1982) tests in
two primary ways. First, it does not require a significant zero-order
effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable, which
Hayes (2013) and others have criticized as not meaningful (Zhao,
Lynch, & Chen, 2010). Second, bootstrapping corrects the chance of a
non-normal distribution using the sample data to estimate the sampling
distribution of the indirect effect by re-sampling the data.
We included organ donation intentions as the dependent variable,
political party supported as the independent variable, and all five af-
fective factors as presumed mediators. Although only perceived benefits
were not significantly-different between LNC and Labor supporters, it is
still conceptually possible for it to mediate. Likewise, it is also possible
for the statistically-different factors (above) to not mediate. The analysis
revealed that the indirect effects for perceived threats to bodily in-
tegrity, ick factors, and jinx factors were all estimated to be sig-
nificantly-different from 0, thus mediation was successful, at the 95%
C.I. and 10,000 bootstrapped samples. While LNC-supporting students
had higher medical distrust than Labor supporters, this difference did
not explain why LNC supporters would be less willing to sign up onto
the organ donation registry. Table 3 presents the indirect effects.
3.2. By self-reported political ideology
One possible concern with comparing students who (said they)
voted for the LNC or Labors is that this identification may not ne-
cessarily tap into their political ideology. Indeed, in some cases, an
individual may identify as conservative but vote for a liberal party for a
particular election. The concern is confounded by the fact that, in
Australia, the conservative right-leaning party is labeled the Liberal
Party, which may pose nomenclatural concerns. Accordingly, we also
analyzed the results with students' self-reported ideology. We present
this in our Supplementary Materials. In brief, we found consistent ef-
fects: bodily integrity, ick, and jinx factors can explain why students
with a more conservative political ideology are less likely to donate
their organs, as in the above findings comparing by affiliation or par-
tisanship.
4. Discussion
In this research, we obtain evidence firstly, that, a conservative
ideology lowers intentions to donate one's organs, and second, that
perceived threats to bodily integrity, ick factors, and jinx factors explain
this relationship. The evidence is converging from two ways of looking
at the data—by comparing individuals who voted for a liberal or con-
servative party in a recent election, and using their self-reported
ideology, consistent with prior research (Wright et al., 2017). Thus, the
data strongly support our hypotheses.
Our findings here provide unique insights into how political
ideology might affect individuals' willingness to sign up to become
organ donors. Though we have examined core political ideologies, and
although ideological beliefs are traditionally seen as inherent (Adorno,
Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950;Jost et al., 2008), recent
Table 1
Correlational results between self-reported ideology, organ donation intentions, and affective attitudes toward organ donations.
Political ideology Organ don. intentions Perceived benefits Bodily integrity Medical distrust Ick factors Jinx factors
PI –−0.22
⁎
0.03 0.27
⁎
0.20
⁎
0.22
⁎
0.20
⁎
ODI –0.47
⁎
−0.59
⁎
0.44
⁎
−0.60
⁎
−0.25
⁎
PB –−0.47
⁎
−0.40
⁎
−0.44
⁎
−0.26
⁎
BI –0.56
⁎
0.67
⁎
0.54
⁎
MD –0.62
⁎
0.61
⁎
ICK –0.51
⁎
JINX –
On political ideology, higher scores mean greater conservatism.
⁎
p< .001.
Table 2
Comparative results by party voted.
Organ don. intentions Perceived benefits Bodily integrity Medical distrust Ick factors Jinx factors
LNC 6.06 (2.88) 7.28 (1.31) 3.14 (2.40) 3.84 (2.16) 3.18 (2.17) 2.75 (1.83)
Labors 7.39 (2.70) 7.22 (1.54) 2.13 (1.79) 2.87 (1.72) 2.45 (1.96) 2.15 (1.49)
Values in parentheses are standard deviations.
E.Y. Chan Personality and Individual Differences xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
3

psychologists have documented how people's political beliefs can be
shifted—at least momentarily. For example, voting in a school or a
church (Berger, Meredith, & Wheeler, 2008) and a brief exposure to the
American flag (Carter, Ferguson, & Hassin, 2011) can affect political
attitudes and even affect voting patterns. Thus, this suggests that si-
tuations that could trigger individuals' conservativism might make
them more worried about bodily integrity, more disgusted, and less
likely to tempt fate, and in turn lowering organ donation intentions. But
luckily, it also suggests that triggering individuals' liberalism might
increase organ donation intentions.
Furthermore, by understanding why people who are aligned with
conservatism are unlikely to donate their organs, this offers unique
intervention strategies to increase the organ supply available. For ex-
ample, our findings suggest that it may be important to reduce per-
ceived threats to bodily integrity, to reduce disgust, and reduce the
perception of tempting fate in order to increase intentions among
conservatives. This may be accomplished by any number of means, such
as by communicating how the body would be treated with integrity or
by prompting a more cognitive means of processing information in
order to reduce disgust (an emotional reaction) and concerns about
tempting fate (which diminish with more reasoned processes). Policy
officials and other agents tasked with communication materials that
aim to promote organ donation thus would find our results practical.
Although we do not proffer any specific intervention strategies as our
focus is on understanding the mechanisms that explain why con-
servatives are less willing to donate their organs, our findings are
fruitful nonetheless.
We initially did not predict a difference between liberals and con-
servatives on medical distrust, which we found. There is evidence that,
at least in the United States, conservatives are less trusting of public
officials and science generally (Mooney, 2012); our finding may extend
these prior findings to a difference in the amount of trust that con-
servatives place in doctors and not simply medicine or healthcare. That
said, the difference in political ideology on medical distrust did not
explain conservatives' lower intentions to donate their organs. Cer-
tainly, more research on this possibility is needed, but these results
imply that reducing medical distrust, which might increase organ do-
nation rates in other population segments such as African Americans in
the U.S. (Russell, Robinson, Thompson, Perryman, & Arriola, 2012),
may likely not be effective in improving conservatives'. This offers very
practical implications for the types of messages to use in messaging to
increase organ donation rates. Our current work suggests that reducing
perceived threats to body integrity along with the perceived ick and
jinx factors may be more successful among political conservatives. That
said, we measured distrust about doctors in the medical profession, but
conservatives' distrust in the public and in science, which we did not
measure, may explain their organ donation intention rates.
There are also other limitations to our current study that are worthy
of attention. We recruited undergraduate students in Australia where
voting is mandatory and who voted, but further research should ex-
amine the generalizability of our findings to other populations, such as
older individuals and in other countries. Certainly, there are differences
in conservatism country to country, yet we focus on the core dimen-
sions which should be country-independent. It should nonetheless be
important to replicate the effect elsewhere. And, while we find con-
verging effects using both party voted and self-reported ideology, there
are likely other ways to assess political ideology. This would provide
stronger evidence that it is not party (which is country-specific) or our
particular measure of ideology that produce the effects, but rather
conservatism or liberalism at its ideological, fundamental level.
More broadly, we find that all five affective factors toward organ
donations correlate highly with each other. We find high correlations
across the factors, this time in an Australian sample, consistent with
Morgan et al. (2008) and O'Carroll et al. (2011). Further work using this
scale should carefully delineate the distinctions between the factors in
order to make clear and precise predictions based on each factor singly.
If they are all measuring the same underlying construct, then a simple
measure of affective reactions might suffice. That said, we still find that
each affective attitude may be impacted by different factors, necessi-
tating the need to further understand the measure and to ensure its
theoretical validity and practical benefit. Our current inquiry does in-
dicate that one's political ideology can influence his or her organ do-
nation intentions, which is mediated by their affective attitudes. Thus,
we provide insights into a new way of understanding how personality
variables influence organ donations, using a variable (political
ideology) that exerts a great deal of influence on various aspects of one's
decisions that have broader social implications.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.12.022.
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Mediation results for party voted.
βS.E. LL UL
Perceived benefits −0.02 0.02 −0.06 0.01
Bodily integrity −0.02 0.02 −0.07 −0.01
Medical distrust −0.01 0.01 −0.04 0.004
Ick factors −0.04 0.02 −0.09 −0.01
Jinx factors −0.02 0.01 −0.06 −0.003
LL = lower limit, and UL = upper limit. Political party voted was coded as
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all five affective factors in a parallel mediation model. Conducted at the 95%
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