Belief in the Social Contract Predicts Public Policy Support Across the Political Divide
Abstract
Abstract Academics have long argued that social actors (individuals, governments, businesses) have responsibilities to and derive rights from each other. Yet lay beliefs in this social contract remain underexplored. Here we identify the belief in the social contract as a meaningful individual difference construct that guides how consumers view the societies they inhabit. We argue and show that the belief in the social contract cuts across the political divide and is therefore important to account for when building interventions that address systemic problems born from consumption, such as climate change, especially since such interventions tend to be costly and politically charged. Across seven studies (comprising 13 investigations and spanning five countries/four continents; n = 6,742) we (1) develop a reliable, psychometrically valid scale to assess this belief, (2) establish its predictive validity via consumer relevant outcomes (positive sum views of market exchange, temporal discounting), and (3) document how belief in the social contract predicts support for climate policies independently of political ideology, both when measured (studies 4-6) and manipulated (study 7). We conclude with a discussion of implications for practitioners who are eager to target those most likely to support costly, politically contentious policies.
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