Bleeding hearts and heartless believers: How political ideology impacts consumer grit and moral consumer choices

Abstract

Grit—passion and perseverance toward long‐term goals—is generally associated with conscientiousness and consistency and thus presumed to be ideologically conservative in nature. Yet, an understanding of how liberals and conservatives differ in grittiness remains elusive. In this research, overall grit did not differ between liberals and conservatives, rather ideology played an essential role in driving which dimension of grit (perseverance; passion) was emphasized. Contrary to conventional wisdom, grit‐based perseverance (passion) was more influential to liberals (conservatives). Across two studies and a pilot study (appendix), the authors find that while ideology had no direct influence on moral consumer choices, grit‐based perseverance (passion), related to consumers' liberal (conservative) ideology, significantly increased (decreased) intentions to make moral consumer choices. These findings delineate the relationship between political ideology and grit, and the impact on moral consumer choices. The current research offers important implications for practitioners as well as numerous avenues for future research.