Trump reacts as multiple shots rang out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show. Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Futurism reports “a tranche of psychological studies found something startling about Donald Trump’s most loyal soldiers: they each turn to a grim coping mechanism to make sense of the real estate mogul’s laundry list of lies and documented sexual abuse.”
Three separate research papers, published together in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, each point to the same conclusion, say analysts. Psychologists surveyed 128 U.S. adults in October 2019, who indicated a preference for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Asked how they justified their support for the GOP candidate given allegations of his sexual misconduct, over half the group said they relied simply on denial and chose to not believe the charge.
“Those results were reproduced in a second study, started in December 2019, two days after federal lawmakers voted to impeach the president,” reports Futurism. “This time, 173 MAGA diehards largely either denied the accusations, or demurred by changing the topic to Trump’s policy decisions. In that study, the majority of supporters denied the accusations outright, while 15 percent declared they simply don’t care.”
Meanwhile, the most recent study, a 2022 survey taken immediately after Trump was arraigned for his role in the January 6 riots, found that of 187 participants, over 60 percent felt the accusations against the president were a lie, despite video footage of the violence at the Capital being readily available.
“While each study is highly complex in their own right, together they reinforce the finding that denial of factual information — Trump’s seedy misdeeds, basically — is a direct response to anxiety caused by cognitive dissonance,” said Futurism.
“I was motivated by real-life experiences,” said study author Cindy Harmon-Jones, senior lecturer in psychology at Western Sydney University. “I’ve been puzzled and confused by the continuing support and admiration that Donald Trump’s supporters hold for him, despite the many accusations that he has engaged in sexual assault, corruption, and other immoral and illegal activities. I wanted to give those supporters a chance to explain in their own words why they support him.”
Harmon-Jones says she is also interested in cognitive dissonance outside the Trump-related breakdown.
“Would supporters of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton react similarly if they learned of similar accusations against them? That remains to be tested,” she said.
