Responses to Belief-Conflicting Information: Justification of Support for Donald Trump

Two studies take a dissonance theory perspective to understanding why individuals support Donald Trump as president of the United States despite accusations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal activity. Participants were randomly assigned to a dissonance condition in which they read an essay about Trump’s sexual misconduct or a neutral essay. They provided open-ended responses to 2 questions that asked why participants support Trump and how they justify their support given allegations against him. These responses were coded by a judge who was blind to condition. Study 1 was conducted 2 months before Trump was impeached. In this study, 7 categories of reasons for supporting Trump, and 3 categories of justification despite allegations, were identified. A comparison of conditions showed that participants in the dissonance condition were more likely to state that they disbelieved the accusations and less likely to state that Trump’s policies matter and not his personal life. Study 2 was conducted 2 days after the vote to impeach Trump, when high dissonance would be expected for all Trump supporters. Results replicated the categories of support and justification from Study 1, plus additional categories. A quasi-experimental comparison of These studies take a dissonance theory perspective to understanding why individuals support Donald Trump as president of the United States despite accusations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal activity. Participants provided open-ended responses to questions that asked why they support Trump and how they justify their support given the allegations against him. Study 1 was conducted 2 months before Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In this study, 7 categories of reasons for supporting Trump, and 3 categories of 22 justification despite allegations, were identified. Study 2 was conducted 2 days after a vote to impeach Trump. Study 3 was conducted 2 days after Trump was arraigned for his involvement in the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol Building. Results from Studies 2 and 3 replicated the categories of support and justification. Across studies, the reasons given to justify support of Trump despite allegations of wrongdoing were stating that they disbelieved the allegation, claiming that others do similar misdeeds, and stating that they care about his policies, not his personal life. A comparison of the 3 studies revealed that participants in Study 3 were more likely to justify their support for Trump by saying they disbelieved the allegations, and less likely to say that others do similar misdeeds or that they care about policies, compared to those in Studies 1 and 2. The current results suggest that individuals in a naturalistic context may choose a number of different strategies in response to information that conflicts with their important beliefs, including denying the veracity of information, increasing the importance of consonant information, and directing attention to the immoral acts of others. These results are unlike those of most laboratory research on dissonance theory, in which participants are given only one dissonance reduction opportunity.