Conservatives Are More Open to Seemingly Inferior Products Than Liberals Are

Dartmouth College’s Nailya Ordabayeva and Arizona State University’s Monika Lisjak photographed the purchases of customers at a Boston farmers market and surveyed the shoppers about their political leanings. They rated each person’s items on aesthetics and mapped the results against the survey responses and found a correlation: Conservatives were more likely than liberals to have bought misshapen or blemished produce. Eight subsequent studies found a similar pattern with other goods. The conclusion: Conservatives are more open to seemingly inferior products than liberals are. Professor Ordabayeva, defend your research. Ordabayeva: Political ideology is an important aspect of identity and shapes consumer behavior in significant ways. Previous research has focused on preferences for high-status luxury products like fancy cars and designer clothing. Multiple studies have found that conservatives have a stronger preference for such items than liberals do, because they believe in a social hierarchy and want to signal their standing in it. But no one had looked at products on the other end of the spectrum—everyday items that are perfectly functional but inferior to alternatives along some readily observed dimensions. HBR: Why would conservative political views make people accept—much less prefer—seemingly inferior products? We explored that question in an experiment involving a different product: online storytelling courses. Participants evaluated two courses after answering questions about their political beliefs. The courses were comparable in several ways, but the first was clearly weaker in terms of instructor training and the number of articles provided. After saying which course they’d choose if selected to receive a subscription, the participants indicated their degree of agreement with four statements devised to measure their belief that the universe is in balance—for example, “Bad things and events are always compensated for by good things and events” and “After the rain comes the sun.” Conservatives reported a stronger belief in balance than liberals did, and they were more likely than liberals to choose the inferior course. A belief in balance leads people to infer that negatives are compensated for by positives. We determined that by asking participants in the same experiment what they thought of statements like “What option B lacks on some aspects, it makes up for with strengths on other aspects.” Conservatives were more likely than liberals to say they agreed. So those who chose the seemingly inferior course would have reasoned that it had hidden strengths to balance its obvious weaknesses. Those who chose the ugly produce thought it must have something positive that made up for its defects—perhaps it was organic or especially tasty. How large an effect are we talking about? To be clear, most people in our studies, whether conservative or liberal, preferred the perceptibly superior products. But political ideology played a systematic role in who opted for the inferior items, with some studies showing a bigger effect than others. In the produce study, for example, extremely conservative shoppers were up to 49% more likely to buy aesthetically flawed items than extremely liberal shoppers were. In the online-course study, each one-point increase in conservatism along a nine-point scale bolstered the odds of choosing the inferior course by a factor of 1.3. Were there any moderating elements? There were. One of our experiments was designed to see what would happen if we encouraged a belief in balance in everyone. We had half the participants read several statements describing positive and negative aspects of various situations—for instance, the idea that although impulsivity can lead to overspending, it also fosters more-spontaneous relationships. The other half formed a control group. We then showed both groups two brands of USB drives, one of which had slower reading and writing speeds. The control group exhibited the same pattern as in our previous studies. But when participants had read about balance, politics had no effect on the preference for the slower flash drive. Reading about balance increased liberals’ interest in it to the point where their choices matched conservatives’. How about the other way around? We did find an intervention that changed conservatives’ preferences. Compensatory reasoning is a complex process that taxes people’s cognitive resources. So we began another flash-drive experiment by asking some participants to memorize an eight-digit number and repeat it at the end of the exercise. That significantly lowered interest in the slower drive among conservatives, who were now no more likely than liberals to say they would choose it. Did price enter into people’s decisions? Price can be a complex factor, so we wanted to leave it out of the equation. We analyzed prices at the farmers market and found no evidence that ugly produce was discounted. We held price constant in our lab experiments. And in field analyses we conducted with brands rated by Consumer Reports, we controlled for the influence of price within each category, and our results held. Were any other factors important? In our final experiment we set out to confirm that the pattern we found emerges only when consumers aren’t concerned about status. We showed participants one of two print ads for a fictitious line of athletic shoes. The first described the shoes as economical and mass-market. The second described them as upscale and limited in supply. The ads used the same imagery and layout, but the tagline in one read, “It’s just another day,” while the tagline in the other read, “Shoes for the select few.” Participants then considered two versions of the shoes, one of which was inferior on some qualities, and said which they’d rather buy. Among those who saw the ad portraying the shoes as everyday, mass-market wear, conservatives were more likely than liberals to say they’d buy the inferior pair. But for those prompted to see the shoes as status symbols, political identification had no effect on preferences. Could the conservative openness to apparently inferior products extend to human beings? It’s an intriguing question! In a related investigation we gave people descriptions of two job candidates, portraying one as friendlier, and asked whom they would hire. Conservatives were more likely than liberals to reason that the less friendly candidate must be the more intelligent and competent of the two, and they were more willing to make that person an offer. That’s very much in keeping with our product-related results. You conducted your studies in the United States. Would you expect similar results in other countries? Prior work by others has found that the effects of political ideology on various nonpolitical domains are consistent across Western countries with similar political systems. So we’d predict a similar effect in those places—but this would be an interesting question to pursue in future studies. How can retailers use your findings? Makers of observably inferior products could market them to conservative consumer segments, whether by targeting geographic regions that lean conservative or by advertising in media outlets and on programs that skew toward conservative audiences. They could sometimes benefit from acknowledging rather than downplaying products’ weaknesses, since that could jump-start the compensatory-reasoning process. And they could highlight concepts of balance and trade-offs to make their products more appealing to conservatives and liberals alike. Some ugly-produce sellers have done that to good effect. For example, one Imperfect Produce (now Imperfect Foods) ad asks, “Why look normal when you taste fabulous?” Finally, we wondered whether our findings would apply to products post-purchase. Are conservatives more likely than liberals to hold on to certain things longer, finding positive attributes in items that become inferior or outdated over time, and are they generally more satisfied with the products they buy and consume? Looking into that possibility with another set of coauthors and exploring many categories and offerings, I found that conservatives indeed report higher satisfaction with the items they purchase than liberals do. So this notion of balance and compensatory reasoning may have implications for satisfaction and sustainability, too.

Conservatives Are More Open to Seemingly Inferior Products Than Liberals Are

Summary.

Partner Center