New study identifies a psychological factor linked to Trump supporters’ vindictiveness

The desire to matter and feel significant among Donald Trump supporters is associated with support for hostile and vindictive actions against the president’s political rivals, according to new research published in the journal Political Psychology. In a series of studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 election in the United States, the researchers examined how the quest for personal significance was related to confrontational intergroup behaviors.

“Our team studies what motivates people to support and engage in radical political actions. In the past we focused on actions — both peaceful and violent — that were aimed against the political system such as protesting, donating money for a cause, or using politically motivated violence,” explained study author Katarzyna Jaśko, an associate professor at Jagiellonian University in Poland.

“In this study we wanted to look at both sides and to explore the motivations of not only those who protest against the government but also those who support it. Our thinking was that just like some citizens contest the system and engage in aggressive actions directed against it, the government can use its power in benevolent or hostile ways and it’s important to understand whether its supporters accept it, and if so why?”

The researchers surveyed 189 supporters of Donald Trump and 305 supporters of Hillary Clinton the week preceding Election Day about how different outcomes of the election would make them feel. The participants also indicated their willingness to engage in actions against the future president and their support for hypothetical actions performed by the president against his or her political opponents.

“We asked whether they would support their elected president if, for example, he or she sued the media that criticized them, used the military to stop anti-government demonstrations, investigated political opponents’ email accounts or, in contrast, he or she demonstrated respect for their political opponents and included them in a political process,” Jaśko explained.

The researchers then repeated the study with another 217 Trump voters and 261 Clinton voters a week after the 2016 election.

“We were interested whether psychological factors such as gain of personal significance (i.e., feeling proud, strong, and important) derived from the victory of one’s political candidate or loss of personal significance (i.e., feeling humiliated, excluded, and ashamed) experienced after the defeat could predict those peaceful or aggressive reactions,” Jaśko said.

Trump supporters were more likely to approve of him taking hostile actions against his political opponents than Clinton supporters were to approve hers. The more Trump supporters thought his election would result in a gain of personal significance, the more supportive they were of his hostile actions.

The researchers also analyzed data from the Pew Research Center’s November 2016 Post-Election Survey, which included 533 Trump voters. They found that voters who indicated that the election of Trump made them feel proud were more likely to believe that he should not work with Democratic leaders to accomplish things and should stand up to Democrats even if it means less gets done in Washington.

“It means that among those who were particularly invested in supporting Donald Trump and whose individual sense of personal significance was mostly affected by the victory, his hostile actions were accepted the most,” Jaśko told PsyPost.

“In contrast, among voters of Hillary Clinton (when they were asked about it a week before the elections), expected gain of personal significance (should she be victorious) was weakly but significantly related to support for her benevolent but not hostile actions toward her opponents. Thus, Trump supporters seemed to be more vindictive in their expected (and actual) victory, whereas that was not the case for Clinton’s supporters.”

“Among the losers of elections, we found that loss of personal significance was related to greater motivation to engage in peaceful, but not violent, actions toward the government. This was true for both groups and we did not find any differences between supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This result could suggest that support for aggressive and hostile actions depends on whether those actions are perpetrated against the political system (in which case support for such actions is low in both groups) or whether they are endorsed by elected authorities,” Jaśko explained.

All research includes some limitations, and the current study is no exception. One thing the study was unable to assess was why there was a difference between Trump and Clinton supporters.

“We don’t know what psychological factors account for the differences we obtained between supporters of Trump and Clinton in their support for hostile actions of their elected candidate. None of the variables that we included in our study such as political ideology, socioeconomic status, or education explained those differences,” Jaśko said.

Future research could also examine “how the dynamic between feelings of personal significance gained from supporting one’s leader and support for hostile versus peaceful actions unfolds over time,” she noted.

The study, “Making Americans Feel Great Again? Personal Significance Predicts Political Intentions of Losers and Winners of the 2016 U.S. Election“, was authored by Katarzyna Jasko, Joanna Grzymala‐Moszczynska, Marta Maj, Marta Szastok, and Arie W. Kruglanski.