Does money change political views? – An investigation of money priming and the preference for right-wing politics

In a multistudy approach across seven studies we explored whether, as suggested by previous research, money primes affect people’s political orientation. Across the studies we used different dependent variables and samples, and we combined the results in a small-scale meta-analysis to test two competing hypotheses. Independent of the measures and experimental setting, our findings did not indicate that money primes lead to stronger right-wing orientations (main-effect hypothesis). However, we obtained a marginally significant interaction effect suggesting that the money priming effect is moderated by subjective socioeconomic status (moderation hypothesis). These findings suggest that, contrary to previous research, the money priming effect on political orientation is at best small and dependent on one’s subjective socioeconomic status. Implications for money priming research and political psychology are discussed.