Power for the Powerless: How Donald Trump Used Voters’ Anxieties to Win in 2016

Previous research has attempted to explain the results of the 2016 presidential election, and has concluded that a jaded and anxious electorate propelled Trump to the White House. The current research examines what psychological processes might have been at play. When people feel powerless in their day-to-day lives but are made to feel powerful it leads to behavior that goes against standard moral beliefs (e.g., supporting a presidential candidate who makes offensive comments that one might not explicitly endorse). I hypothesize that a feeling of powerfulness among a subset of the population used to feeling powerless will increase their support for Trump. Participants were randomly assigned to feel either powerful or powerless, and then took ‘support for Trump’ surveys. The hypothesis was partially confirmed. Men, but not women, who were felt powerless in their day-to-day lives, but were made to feel powerful in the context of the study were most likely to support President Trump. The research therefore provides evidence that some Trump voters were motivated to vote Trump based on how powerful he made them feel. Power for the Powerless: How Donald Trump Used Voters’ Anxieties to Win in 2016 The 2016 Presidential election sent shockwaves through America, and political pundits and scientists are still trying to figure out the how and why of Donald Trump’s surprise victory. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that Trump was a very inexpert candidate running against a highly experienced opponent who was heir to the incumbent political party during a good economy (Sides et al., 2017). Also, on the campaign trail, Trump made what many would consider many offensive and inappropriate comments (Glorioso, 2016). In addition to that, Trump made anti-immigrant sentiments a centerpiece of his campaign, and although most Americans do not view themselves as racist (Hopkins, 2019), many of them voted for Donald Trump, a man who 51% of the nation says is racist (Snow et al.,2019). What is going on here? The present research examines potential psychological explanations for President Trump’s election. The explanations require an understanding of the identity of his main supporters, what they like about his message, and the psychological processes at the heart of the 2016 election. Trump Supporters: From Economic Insecurity to Xenophobia Many pundits and scholars have identified President Trump’s strong anti-immigration attitudes as a salient factor that appeals to much of his base (Burnett, 2016). According to Major et al. (2018), part of President Trump’s base includes white Americans who are anxious about race relations. Major et al. found that reminding white people who are high in ethnic identification (i.e., who frequently think of their ethnic identity) that they will soon be a minority group led them to become more concerned about the waning status and influence of white Americans. These people then self-reported identifying greatly with Trump and anti-immigration policies. In line with these findings, Darwish et al. (2017) analyzed President Trump’s tweets, and found that some of the most popular ones were immigration related. In particular, his tweets about building the wall on the American-Mexican border received a lot of positive attention from his supporters. Why is immigration so important to his supporters? A possible reason is suggested by system justification theory (SJT; e.g., Jost et al., 2011). SJT essentially states that when people feel anxious, they look to the status quo (e.g., the economic system of a country) for reassurance. People like to believe that the system they live in is fair, just, and legitimate. This assuages anxiety because when people know that they live in a universe that has a sense of justice and order, then they are able to make accurate predictions about the environment, and thus act in a way that is beneficial to their goals (Furnham, 2003). Therefore, when people feel uncertain and anxious they rely on something that is fair, just, and legitimate to assure them that everything is good. Hennes et al. (2012) found that when there was high anxiety, people showed more support for the Tea Party (a conservative group focused on affirming traditional American values) and lower support for the Occupy Wall Street movement (a liberal group concerned with changing America’s economic culture). Similarly, Van der Toorn and colleagues (2015) found that when people feel powerless, they become motivated to view the (traditional) economic system as legitimate, indicating that they look to the system in order to feel a sense of stability. These findings seem to mirror the dynamics of the 2016 election, in that Trump’s supporters were feeling helpless to maintain their higher status in society, and Trump represented a return to the status quo. For example, many Americans were feeling the effects of economic globalization (Dodo, 2016). People were losing their jobs to places overseas, and because of that many Americans felt that America had lost its status as a dominant power. This has led to people yearning for the ‘good old days’ when they had jobs and America was the ‘best country’. This, coupled with the fear that many dangerous immigrants were coming to America (and changing the country), had many people wishing for a time before immigration was such a large specter of fear. Indeed, Donald Trump was very open about his love for the American status quo (e.g., his campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again”; Darwish et al., 2017). For instance, he has frequently advocated for the restriction of non-white immigration. That was made clear when he said how he did not want immigrants from “shithole countries” (i.e. Latin American and African countries; Dawsey, 2018). These are areas that are having many people immigrate to America, a relatively new trend. President Obama, a black progressive man, and his political heir, 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, a woman, also represented a change in American society, a change that many people felt threatened by (hence the rise of groups such as the Tea Party; Sides et al., 2017). In general, Trump supporters might have been feeling anxious about their position in society. They might have felt that their traditional position at the top of society was being threatened. Trump addressed their concerns by implying that he would protect their position at the top of society by keeping out immigrants (e.g., by building a wall on the border and creating a travel ban against Muslims) and enacting protectionist trade policies. In this way, Trump’s immigration policy and economic rhetoric promised to restore the earlier status quo, and provided a scapegoat for Trump supporters’ feelings of anxiety. Trump would protect his supporters’ position in society. Psychological Process and Power At a mechanistic level, the construct of psychological power (and conversely, powerlessness) seems central to the sense of anxiety about one’s position in society. Ultimately, Trump’s supporters could have been feeling that their levels of power in society were waning, and they wanted someone who was going to address that. In social psychology, power is a person’s perception of how well he or she can influence others (Anderson et al., 2012). Anderson et al. (2012) describe power as control over resources (such as money or food) or a product of a person’s social role (i.e. the leader of the clan). More recently, power has been defined as something much more complex than control and social roles; it is also a psychological state of being. For instance, some people view themselves as chronically powerless, which can be true even among people who are actually powerful. The present research focuses on this dichotomy between chronic power and acute power. Williams et al. (2017) define chronic power as the amount of power one feels in daily life (e.g., by virtue of being a CEO vs. an intern), whereas acute power refers to the power one feels in a transient context (e.g., being randomly assigned to feel powerful or powerless in an experiment). They found that people with low chronic power, but high acute power, act the worst in moral judgement scenarios. For example, in an unrequited love situation, the low chronic, but high acute power participants mentioned how they would keep pursuing their love interest even after being rejected. This was also shown in the unrequited workplace love scenario. Those same individuals said that they would sabotage a performance review of his or her crush in order to prevent him or her from being promoted. They did that in order to keep their crush in the same department as them, which shows just how intense power can be, it can drastically change someone even with only a superficial manipulation. This particular combination leads to the morally worst behavior because they are experiencing a rare opportunity to enjoy power. They have an opportunity to indulge the self’s desires, something that they do not typically get during their day to day life. The experiment allows those people to enjoy that sense of power through dominating another individual. Psychological Process and Narcissism The combination of low chronic and high acute power seems similar to the personality trait of narcissism, which entails a sense of dominance and social boldness (Wink, 1991) that theoretically masks and compensates for chronic feelings of inferiority. The main features of narcissism include a disregard for others, grandiosity, fragile self-esteem, and a belief that one deserves special treatment. Applying this to an electoral context, is it possible that narcissism can be experienced collectively, for example, among a segment of the population who feel chronically insecure about their position of society, and who therefore crave superiority? Golec de Zavala et al. (2017) examined how collective narcissism (believing that one’s group is superior) could play