The language used in the  NYT article you referenced is fairly loose for something that is trying to draw conclusions from statistics. And it is not hard to find people questioning the reliability of the source work, <i>Who Really Cares</i> by Arthur Brooks.<p>For example, you and the article&#x27;s author state that conservatives donate more blood (which may well be factually correct) and seem to assume that there is a direct causal relationship from political belief. It may instead be that non-conservatives are disproportionately likely to belong to communities that have negative attitude to blood donation. See [1] for a possible example. There may be many other confounding factors.<p><i>&quot;People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes&quot;</i><p>&quot;People in red states&quot; are not all conservatives. If those people in aggregate are more likely to volunteer then the causal factor(s) may have more to do with geography or regional history than political outlook.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;20840534" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;20840534</a>