ws of such individuals’ parents.
Are we indeed seeing more emotion and vitriol in the 2016 presidential elections than ever before, as the media have suggested, or is there historical precedent to the current campaign?
Elections have always generated highly emotional responses. That’s why your mom told you not to talk about sex, politics, or religion at cocktail parties—because people can get so emotional about these topics. However, as is well documented in our original work, dozens of studies show that authoritarianism in a society increases in times of economic or social unrest. The economic crisis that began in 2007 undermined the economic security that many Americans had felt. This crisis, combined with the election of a black President in 2008 whom many white individuals regarded as “other,” and thus illegitimate, helped fuel such an increase of emotion among individuals. Our recently published study in the journal Political Psychology found that higher authoritarianism is associated with negative emotion, such as higher levels of what psychologists call “trait-anger” (measured by agreement with statements like, e.g., “I slam doors when I am angry”), and higher levels of a hostile attribution bias (agreeing with statements like, “I have often felt that strangers were looking at me critically,” and “I often wonder what hidden reason another person may have for doing something nice for me.”), seeing the world as a more dangerous and fearful place.
We would expect higher levels of emotion, particularly among individuals pre-disposed to support Trump by their childhood backgrounds. As we have shown in our research, childhood experiences of harsh punishment, when unacknowledged, can provide additional emotional energy that amplifies support for punitive public policies and scapegoating of different groups. Trump’s claim in the first debate with Hillary Clinton that gangs of illegal immigrants terrorizing the populace plague inner cities in the U.S. is a clear example of this.
What can we learn about the underlying psychological processes behind political campaigns from the rise of Donald Trump?
In our research we found that rage displaced from childhood physical punishment drives people’s attitudes towards political issues involving retribution against targets seen as deserving of punitive treatment. All too often, those targets are sought among members of despised out-groups. Politicians who offer simple, punitive policies toward such out-groups with the promise of making voters’ lives safer or correcting injustice that has prevented voters from achieving success can tap into displaced rage and the desire for retribution to win support. This is no more true today than it was in previous elections but there is one huge difference about the 2016 election cycle: Donald Trump’s willingness to engage in racist and divisive rhetoric—saying out loud what some voters secretly believe—and his success in defining such rhetoric as “plain speaking” or a lack of “political correctness” rather than hate mongering. Trump’s success in harnessing rage and punitive attitudes towards out-groups regardless of reality—painting all Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” for example, to support his candidacy despite a lack of clear or workable policies testifies to the power of emotion aside from rational thought in helping to define the political landscape and drive the vote.
You originally wrote this book when television and radio dominated political campaigning, and showed how dramatic and emotional coverage affected viewers’ perception of issues. How has the advent of social media impacted viewer engagement with and reception of political issues?
Social media and the internet have created an environment where it is dramatically easier for disparate communities of individuals to find each other and reinforce their emotionally-driven opinions, such as the alt-right movement, encouraging people to reject conflicting information more than they normally would, and strengthening their belief that there is a “silent majority” that will show up at the