Beyond selfishness: the interaction of income and human values in shaping Europeans’ ideology

The left-right scale of political orientation plays a pivotal role in shaping individual behaviour and government policies, particularly in Western countries. Although rational choice theory suggests that individuals with lower (higher) incomes lean towards left-wing (right-wing) redistributive policies, empirical evidence has challenged this classical view. Building on social and evolutionary psychology, cognitive dissonance theory, and experimental evidence, I argue that resolving this question requires disentangling the role of different human motivations in individuals with different personal and contextual attributes, specifically economic status. Using the European Social Survey and Schwartz’s scale of human values to estimate models of individuals’ political orientation, this paper estimates the joint and interacting ideological effects of household income and human values after controlling for possible income endogeneity. The results confirm that the classical view of ideology is useful but too simplistic. The ideological bias of human values is persistent, though economic circumstances act as a moderating variable in this relationship: Human values play a weaker role in shaping political orientation for citizens of lower economic status. The article illustrates the power of interactions to define complex profiles of citizens and proposes a research agenda.