Why voters support Trump despite his alleged wrongdoings

Trump supporters

Source: Charlotte Cuthbertson/ Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 2.0)

This post was co-authored by my colleague Cindy Harmon-Jones, who is the first author of the manuscript reporting these results.

People who oppose Donald Trump being elected to serve as president of the United States, I probably think his supporters are weird—and vice versa. But Trump stands out from other former and would-be presidents in terms of the number of crimes and moral turpitude he has been accused of. Given this context, we, ca cognitive dissonance researchers, wondered what Trump supporters would say when asked why they support him given his alleged crimes and misconduct. I assumed that most of his supporters were decent people who would experience some dissonance in supporting a president who has been accused of so many wrongdoings.

The survey question

To try to understand Trump’s supporters, we surveyed them and asked them how they justified their support given the allegations in which he has been implicated. sexual misconduct and illegal activities. I’ve conducted three studies since Trump was elected president.

responses

In the first study, conducted in October 2019, the most common response was that participants said they did not believe the allegations: “The media has made a habit of spreading false lies about Donald Trump because they are still bitter that he dared to wins. elections”; “If he did something illegal, show me the evidence.” Two other common responses were that his policies matter, not his personal life (“I reconcile them with his actions during his term. His policies have been great for the country and have made many improvements while in office”) and that other politicians also behave badly (“I have no doubt that most presidents have been immoral in their personal lives”).

These responses remind us of openness to Leon Festinger and the colleagues’ first book on dissonance theory (1956). They wrote: “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you don’t agree and he comes back. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. You appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”

A second study was conducted in December 2019, two days after the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The reasons people gave to justify their support at this point were similar to those observed in the previous study, with the addition of a new category: They stated that they did not care about the charges (“I don’t care about his life sexual or why it involves”). This latter response is similar to the dissonance reduction strategy that has been termed trivialization or mentally reducing the importance of dissonant information (Simon et al., 1995).

In the third study, which was conducted two days after Trump was indicted for election interference for his involvement in the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, the justifications were similar to those given in the previous studies, but a new category appeared: Some who previously supported him no longer did (“After all the hearings and as the information came out, I lost respect for Trump. It was good that he contested the results through the courts, but when the courts they decided that the elections were fair, they should have accepted the results”). Reducing dissonance sometimes involves changing one’s mind and learning from one’s mistakes. This way of reducing dissonance is probably common in life, but not much studied in the field.

Changes over time?

One of the biggest differences between the 3 studies (which parallels Trump’s time in office) is that by Study 3, participants were much less likely to justify their support by saying that other politicians had gotten involved in similar actions. Also, at Study 3, they were more likely to say they did not believe the allegations compared to Studies 1 and 2.

Conclusion

For those who, like us, have difficulty understanding why Trump’s supporters favor him, we hope these results enlighten their thinking. We also hope they provide food for thought about the many ways people can justify their beliefs in the face of disconfirming information.