Economic Conservatism Predicts Preference for Automated Products

There may be two distinct dimensions of conservative political ideology, namely, economic conservatism and social conservatism. Investigating the implications of this for consumer behavior, we posit that economic conservatives express a higher preference for automated (but not manual) consumer products because the outputs that automated products produce are predictable and satisfy economic conservatives’ need for predictability. Results from study 1 support our theorizing, with study 2 implicating the role of need for predictability and study 3 ruling out work ethic as a rival mechanism. We obtain inconsistent findings about social conservatism, however. Our results add nuance to the research on political ideology by examining its two distinct dimensions (economic vs. social conservatism) and to the literature on technology adoption by highlighting one other variable that distinguishes automated from manual products (output predictability).