Bismarckian welfare revisited: Fear of being violently dispossessed motivates support for redistribution

Abstract

Resource transfers among individuals can be driven by selfish, altruistic, competitive, or prudential motives. Here, we focus on prudence, specifically the propitiation of aggressive individuals or coalitions to avoid injurious loss. Across the animal kingdom, choosing to cede a resource to a stronger or needier individual is often more advantageous than losing the resource while also being harmed in the process. If the modern human skull houses a Stone Age mind, this ancient motive—though perhaps irrelevant in modern societies with legal enforcement of property rights—might still be at work. In domestic politics, the game-theoretic logic of appeasement is encapsulated in the quip, “If there is to be revolution, we would rather make it than suffer it,” attributed to Otto von Bismarck, the father of the modern welfare state. Are people intuitive Bismarckians? Across three studies in the United Kingdom and the United States—two with nationally representative samples and one preregistered (total N = 1911)—we observed robust associations between fear of being violently dispossessed and support for progressive redistribution. These associations were substantial and persisted even after controlling for other motives previously linked to redistribution, including self-interest, compassion, malicious envy, coercive egalitarianism, and proportionality, as well as political orientation. By elucidating the psychological mechanisms underpinning resource transfers, these findings advance our understanding of why individuals support redistribution in complex societies.