Trump Supporters Have Less Interpersonal Warmth and More Cognitive Rigidity
Where someone is on the political spectrum has a lot to do with their psychological profile.
During the 2020 US presidential primaries, Womick and King rekindled an old debate among social psychologists. It had already been demonstrated that conservatism was correlated with having less interpersonal warmth and a less open mind, but some in this field believed this was true for liberals as well. That is, they supported the idea that the further a person drifted away from the moderate center, the less they cared for other people and the less willing they were to change their minds. In other words, social psychologists were split between symmetry (both sides of the political spectrum have similar psychological profiles) and asymmetry (liberals and conservatives are fundamentally different).
Womick and King looked at how 831 US voters scored across 6 variables. To measure cognitive rigidity they used “openness to experience, active open-minded thinking, dogmatism, and preference for one right answer,” and for interpersonal warmth they used compassion and empathy. The researchers then modeled each candidates’ position on the political spectrum. At the time, the candidates were Trump, Bloomberg, Biden, Warren, Sanders, listed in order of most to least conservative.
Their results favored the asymmetrical viewpoint, in that the more conservative a candidate voters supported, the less personal warmth they exhibited and the more cognitive rigidity they possessed. Trump supporters generally scored worse than the other 5 Democratic candidates.
Asymmetry vs. Symmetry
This debate spans 70 years, with empirical research supporting both sides. When it comes cognitive rigidity, the first peer-reviewed analysis in favor of asymmetry was published by Adorno et al. in 1950. It was called The Authoritarian Personality, and it found, among many things, that extreme conservatism could be described as “ludicrous egotism.” This was later updated and republished several times since then, each time reaching the same conclusions. Numerous other studies have been performed in the last few decades demonstrating the same cognitive rigidity. For example, Carney et al. found that conservatism is correlated with an unwillingness to have new experiences; Yilmaz & Saribay found that conservatives tended to eschew open-minded thinking; Choma et al. showed a positive relation to dogmatism; Kruglanski & Webster found a need for cognitive closure; Van Hiel et al. showed an intolerance of ambiguity; and Altemeyer demonstrated that conservatives tend to want structure. Most authors believed that their findings could be attributed to biology, at least partly.
On the other hand, some studies have shown that extreme liberals and extreme conservatives exhibit similar behavior regarding cognitive rigidity, supporting the symmetry point of view. For example, Ditto et al. showed that extremists on both sides were resistant to changing their beliefs; Frimer et al. showed that they avoided exposing themselves to different opinions; Zmigrod et al. demonstrated that they had more cognitive inflexibility when compared to moderates; and Rollwage et al. found that both extreme liberals and extreme conservatives had less metacognitive awareness.
Not much research exists when it comes to interpersonal warmth. On the asymmetry side, Hirsh et al. found that conservatism was generally associated with politeness and conformity, while liberalism was associated with compassion and kindness. Hasson et al. showed that liberals were more motivated to empathize and were better at doing so than conservatives. On the other hand, liberals and conservatives dislike each other just as much and display negative emotions towards those with opposite beliefs (Toner et al.).
In 2017, Jost performed a metanalysis of 281 studies on both cognitive rigidity and interpersonal warmth and confirmed that “significant ideological asymmetries exist with respect to dogmatism, cognitive/perceptual rigidity, personal needs for order/structure/closure, integrative complexity, tolerance of ambiguity/uncertainty, need for cognition, cognitive reflection, self-deception, and subjective perceptions of threat.” In other words, Jost concluded that not only does an asymmetry exist, conservative voters scored significantly higher in cognitive rigidity and lower in interpersonal warmth, tipping the scales in favor of the asymmetry camp.
The 2020 US Presidential Primaries
On March 3, 2020, after Super Tuesday, in which several states hold their primaries, Womack and King subjected 831 participants to a series of questions designed to gage their psychological profile and matched it up with their political leanings. This is how they performed on all 6 variables.
Openness to Experience: Womack and King used 48 items from the Revised NEO Personal Inventory, a test that measures the 5 dimensions of personality, one of which is openness to experience. They found that Trump supporters scored lower than all Democratic candidates, and the more liberal a candidate, the more open his or her supporters were to new experiences, although Elizabeth Warren’s supporters came out slightly ahead of Bernie Sanders’. The test included the following categories:
- Creativity
- Intelligence and knowledge
- Absorption and hypnotisability
- Relationship to other personality traits
- Social and political attitudes
- Subjective well-being and mental health
- Personality disorders
- Religiosity and spirituality
Active Open-Minded Thinking: For this variable, Womack and King used the Actively Open-Minded Thinking Beliefs scale, and again Trump supporters were far behind the more liberal candidates, besides Bloomberg. This test asks participants to asses how true the below statements are.
- True experts are willing to admit to themselves and others that they are uncertain or that they don’t know the answer.
- People should take into consideration evidence that goes against conclusions they favor.
- Being undecided or unsure is the result of muddled thinking.
- People should revise their conclusions in response to relevant new information.
- Changing your mind is a sign of weakness.
- People should search actively for reasons why they might be wrong.
- It is OK to ignore evidence against your established beliefs.
- It is important to be loyal to your beliefs even when evidence is brought to bear against them.
- There is nothing wrong with being undecided about many issues.
- When faced with a puzzling question, we should try to consider more than one possible answer before reaching a conclusion.
- It is best to be confident in a conclusion even when we have good reasons to question it.
One Right Answer: For this variable, Womack and King used a collection of different assessments to create their own. It asked participants to judge how true the following statements were. Trump supporters were a clear outlier.
- An expert who doesn’t come up with a definite answer probably doesn’t know too much.
- The sooner we all acquire similar values and ideals, the better.
- If we cannot achieve agreement on our values, we will never be able to keep this society together.
- If two people are arguing about something, at least one of them must be wrong.
- There is usually one right answer to problems.
- I tend to prefer having one right answer, rather than valuing a variety of approaches to an issue.
- I believe there is usually one right way of doing things.
Dogmatism: Here, Womack and King used the Altemeyer’s (2002) DOG scale, which is designed to measure how strictly participants adhered to a belief system. Like the other assessments, this asked participants to rate how true the following statements were. Trump supporters barely came out better than Bloomberg’s.
- Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything.
- What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.
- Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.
- The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.
- There is no “one right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way.
- This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society.
- Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.”
Empathy and Compassion: For this variable Womack and used the 16-item Compassion Scale and the 16-item Toronto Empathy Questionnaire. The results were not good for Trump supporters. These tests asked participants to rate their responses to prompts such as:
- I pay careful attention when others talk to me about their problems.
- If I see someone going through a difficult time, I try to caring towards that person.
- I am unconcerned with other people’s problems.
- I realize everyone feels down sometimes, it’s part of being human.
- I notice when people are upset, even when they don’t say anything.
Final Thoughts
So in the end, it seems Womack and King’s work has tipped the scale in favor of the asymmetrical viewpoint, and I’m not surprised. Trump’s supporters cheered as he made fun of the mentally-handicapped, called fallen soldiers “losers,” encouraged an insurrection, hatched (and nearly carried out) a plan to overturn an election, turned a blind-eye to immigrant children being separated from their parents, tried to destroy the Affordable Care Act without replacing it like he promised, cheated on his wife with an adult actress, lied multiple times about violating campaign finance laws by paying the adult actress to stay quiet about their affair, stole from a children’s cancer charity, committed 100s of millions of dollars in fraud by intentionally misstating the value of assets, resisted basic science on the pandemic, climate change, etc., etc.
Is it a surprise to anyone that his supporters share some of the same qualities?
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