A new study reveals that President Donald Trump’s derogatory rhetoric is making prejudice fashionable again.
“Individuals naturally want to fit in,” reports PsyPost. “They tend to hide their prejudices when society disapproves of them. However, when a prominent political figure openly uses derogatory language against specific groups, it sends a signal that these negative attitudes are now socially acceptable.”
Making people express their “previously hidden biases” was a talent Trump showed in his 2016 election, but his weird superpower expressed itself again in 2024, researchers noticed.
“After his initial campaign, voters across the political spectrum agreed that expressing prejudice against specifically targeted groups, such as immigrants and Muslims, had become much more acceptable,” PsyPost reports, so researchers needed to determine if Trump’s 2024 reelection triggered an identical reaction in a different political climate.
They recruited undergraduate students from a large midwestern state university and required them to evaluate a wide variety of social groups, including immigrants, Muslims, Asian Americans, disabled people, and many others, totaling 128 distinct groups. Sure enough, when Trump spoke harshly about marginalized communities during his campaign, such as immigrants, Haitians, and Asian Americans, participants became more likely to view prejudice against these same groups as socially acceptable after he won.
“If people have any attitudes at all about a group, they’re likely to be stable,” said Christian S. Crandall, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas. “But Trump can create strong new prejudices, especially if people don’t have much of an opinion about the group in the first place. Attitudes are fairly difficult to change, but they’re much easier to create.”
PsyPost reports the negative political language also predicted a direct rise in the participants’ own internal biases. Following the 2024 election, individuals admitted to holding stronger personal prejudices against the exact groups that the campaign had heavily criticized, which also included Muslims and transgender people.
Crandall said the resulting prejudice was “spread out across the whole nation and population.”
“I think that various kinds of prejudice have become much more overt. Antisemitism (which the administration says it’s fighting, but that seems to be a cover to attack universities, and I’m saying that as a personal opinion, not on the data), and elimination of all DEI-relevant policies and grants seem to be backing off concern for civil rights.”
The participants were predominantly white college students from the midwestern United States, reports PsyPost, which leaves into question how thoroughly Trump’s talent as a prejudice accelerant jumps across race. The study also evaluated changes over a span of just a few weeks, making the long-term stability of these shifts difficult to interpret.