Trump’s Appeal: What Psychology Tells Us

[Sixties Fan]

Which is why your thread is such a brain fart. So do we. You are a leftist you you like leftists. I'm a libertarian so I support either Republicans, Libertarians or other not Democrat parties because you are a direct threat to our liberty.

Then you write stupid posts that Trump supporters are just emotional, then you react when anyone says Democrats aren't. It's the stupid shit Democrats constantly do

That is not what I have been saying.

My supporting issues is a problem for you? You do support issues, I do not know what they are. It does not make what I said is cult like.

You may be projecting because some people in the media and other fields have been calling Trump actions that of a cult.

Is that what you are doing? If anyone calls Trump a cult leader, than it must mean that those calling him that are the real cultists?

What is a cult? What is a cult leader? Do not read the links below unless you wish to think about it.
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Is Trump leading a cult?

My experience as a former cult member and researcher in the field of Social Sciences earned me the ability to identify narcissism and cultish tendencies. Furthermore, as a former New York City resident who kept abreast of interviews with the city’s apparent “movers and shakers,” I often...

ctmirror.org

Amazon product

The Cult of Donald Trump

Trump could easily have stopped his cult members from attacking the Capitol, the latest January 6 committee hearing revealed. But he didn’t want to.

theintercept.com

Trumpâs âcult-like controlâ of Republican party grows stronger since insurrection

A year ago, it seemed as though the Republican party might snap out of its love affair with the former president. Not so

www.theguardian.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Where did I say that? That's funny, I mocked you saying as a leftist you don't understand capitalization while you were proving you don't know how to use quote marks.

FYI, you use quote marks when I used those words verbatim, not when you think you are paraphrasing.

I always have to turn my brain down when I talk to you idiots, and it's still never enough

But you did not answer my reply. Not really. You made it about quotes.

 

[kaz]

My supporting issues is a problem for you?

No, that would be great, try it

 

[kaz]

But you did not answer my reply. Not really. You made it about quotes.

You're posts are massively long and you start out with lies. Just FYI, I stop reading when someone starts their posts with a lie. You'd only know that because I already told you that. Being stupid must suck, sorry, my dear, God somehow skipped you when he was passing out the brains.

So, if you want me to address a point I ignored, try it again and ask the question and don't start out by lying and burying it in BS

 

[Sixties Fan]

You're posts are massively long and you start out with lies. Just FYI, I stop reading when someone starts their posts with a lie. You'd only know that because I already told you that. Being stupid must suck, sorry, my dear, God somehow skipped you when he was passing out the brains.

So, if you want me to address a point I ignored, try it again and ask the question and don't start out by lying and burying it in BS

What was the lie?

 

[22lcidw]

That is not what I have been saying.

My supporting issues is a problem for you? You do support issues, I do not know what they are. It does not make what I said is cult like.

You may be projecting because some people in the media and other fields have been calling Trump actions that of a cult.

Is that what you are doing? If anyone calls Trump a cult leader, than it must mean that those calling him that are the real cultists?

What is a cult? What is a cult leader? Do not read the links below unless you wish to think about it.
-----------

Is Trump leading a cult?

My experience as a former cult member and researcher in the field of Social Sciences earned me the ability to identify narcissism and cultish tendencies. Furthermore, as a former New York City resident who kept abreast of interviews with the city’s apparent “movers and shakers,” I often...

ctmirror.org

Amazon product

The Cult of Donald Trump

Trump could easily have stopped his cult members from attacking the Capitol, the latest January 6 committee hearing revealed. But he didn’t want to.

theintercept.com

Trumpâs âcult-like controlâ of Republican party grows stronger since insurrection

A year ago, it seemed as though the Republican party might snap out of its love affair with the former president. Not so

www.theguardian.com

Progs created issues supported. We spend a lot of money on a small part of the population. And it is endless and thankless. We have forgotten about strong traditional families and the promoting of ethics and morals. This combined with physical foundation allowed to rot has caused the nation to be in a race with our competitors as being handicapped.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Progs created issues supported. We spend a lot of money on a small part of the population. And it is endless and thankless. We have forgotten about strong traditional families and the promoting of ethics and morals. This combined with physical foundation allowed to rot has caused the nation to be in a race with our competitors as being handicapped.

This is not the topic of the thread and it is amazing on how it always goes from what the topic is to something which is discussed on other threads.

 

[Sixties Fan]

No, that would be great, try it

I think it is fair to say that you do know what my issues are without asking me what they are.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Many commentators have argued that Donald Trump’s dominance in the GOP presidential race can be largely explained by ignorance; his candidacy, after all, is most popular among Republican voters without college degrees. Their expertise about current affairs is too fractured and full of holes to spot that only 9 percent of Trump’s statements are “true” or “mostly” true, according to PolitiFact, whereas 57 percent are “false” or “mostly false”—the remainder being “pants on fire” untruths. Trump himself has memorably declared: “I love the poorly educated.”

But as a psychologist who has studied human behavior—including voter behavior—for decades, I think there is something deeper going on. The problem isn’t that voters are too uninformed. It is that they don’t know just how uninformed they are.

Psychological research suggests that people, in general, suffer from what has become known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They have little insight about the cracks and holes in their expertise. In studies in my research lab, people with severe gaps in knowledge and expertise typically fail to recognize how little they know and how badly they perform. To sum it up, the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that task—and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task. This includes political judgment.

We have found this pattern in logical reasoning, grammar, emotional intelligence, financial literacy, numeracy, firearm care and safety, debate skill, and college coursework. Others have found a similar lack of insight among poor chess players, unskilled medical lab technicians, medical students unsuccessfully completing an obstetrics/gynecology rotation, and people failing a test on performing CPR.

This syndrome may well be the key to the Trump voter—and perhaps even to the man himself. Trump has served up numerous illustrative examples of the effect as he continues his confident audition to be leader of the free world even as he seems to lack crucial information about the job. In a December debate he appeared ignorant of what the nuclear triad is. Elsewhere, he has mused that Japan and South Korea should develop their own nuclear weapons—casually reversing decades of U.S. foreign policy.

(full article online)

The Psychological Quirk That Explains Why You Love Donald Trump

The popularity of the GOP front-runner can be explained by the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

www.politico.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building last week, incited by President Donald Trump, serves as the grimmest moment in one of the darkest chapters in the nation’s history. Yet the rioters’ actions—and Trump’s own role in, and response to, them—come as little surprise to many, particularly those who have been studying the president’s mental fitness and the psychology of his most ardent followers since he took office.

One such person is Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”

Lee recently wrote Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, a psychological assessment of the president against the backdrop of his supporters and the country as a whole. These insights are now taking on renewed importance as a growing number of current and former leaders call for Trump to be impeached. On January 9 Lee and her colleagues at the World Mental Health Coalition put out a statement calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office.

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What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

(full article online)

The 'Shared Psychosis' of Donald Trump and His Loyalists

Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s pathological appeal and how to wean people from it

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/trumps-curious-hold-gop-politics/

 

[Lesh]

I don't care about Trump

The country is burning.

The world is burning.

That is what I care about

How about you?

And yet you folks can’t Quit him

 

[Sixties Fan]

You're posts are massively long and you start out with lies. Just FYI, I stop reading when someone starts their posts with a lie. You'd only know that because I already told you that. Being stupid must suck, sorry, my dear, God somehow skipped you when he was passing out the brains.

So, if you want me to address a point I ignored, try it again and ask the question and don't start out by lying and burying it in BS

You make it about quotes, and I am the one responding in BS.

Why is it that so many Trump supporters have been doing nothing but :

1) not respond to what is written in the posts.

2) Demean, mock and insult the conversation away

3) Call the other side liars and not discuss what the lies are about


It is not all Trump supporters but many unfortunately seem to prefer to discuss issues that way, rather than actually discuss them.

 

[Correll]

Many commentators have argued that Donald Trump’s dominance in the GOP presidential race can be largely explained by ignorance; his candidacy, after all, is most popular among Republican voters without college degrees. Their expertise about current affairs is too fractured and full of holes ....

The assumption that "no college" equals ignorance is unsupported, arrogant and offensive.


One does not need a college degree to see that Hillary was hostile to the interests of working class white males. For one example.

 

[kaz]

What was the lie?

That Republicans support our politicians based on emotion. Have you read your OP?

 

[kaz]

I think it is fair to say that you do know what my issues are without asking me what they are.

Yes, you have a lot of issues. Clearly that you went with the brainwashed party that believes you are diverse while you all have the same position on every issue while Republicans are emotional while we all disagree is a great place to start if you're ready to address your issues

 

[Sixties Fan]

That Republicans support our politicians based on emotion. Have you read your OP?

So discuss it. I did not write the article. Discuss what is on the article based on your experience, on what issues made you vote for those you voted for

 

[kaz]

You make it about quotes, and I am the one responding in BS.

Why is it that so many Trump supporters have been doing nothing but :

1) not respond to what is written in the posts.

2) Demean, mock and insult the conversation away

3) Call the other side liars and not discuss what the lies are about


It is not all Trump supporters but many unfortunately seem to prefer to discuss issues that way, rather than actually discuss them.

Define "Trump supporter." Does that mean the active supporters who go to his rallies and love everything he says or does it include those of us who voted for him only the second time after he turned out to be effective but we disagree with a lot of his positions?

Democrats love to make that foggy so you can generalize, so be specific who you mean

 

[Sixties Fan]

Yes, you have a lot of issues. Clearly that you went with the brainwashed party that believes you are diverse while you all have the same position on every issue while Republicans are emotional while we all disagree is a great place to start if you're ready to address your issues

That is not correct. The Democratic Party is more diverse than the Republican one, always has been.
The stats speak for themselves

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/18/democratic-party-was-more-racially-diverse-1996-than-republican-party-is-today/

Democrats Racially Diverse; Republicans Mostly White

Eighty-nine percent of Republicans nationwide in 2012 were non-Hispanic white. The percentages of independents (70%) and Democrats (60%) who are white were substantially smaller.

news.gallup.com

Democrats lead in diversity in new Congress despite GOP gains

The House is set to have record numbers of women and racial minorities in the new Congress, but most of that diversity will come on the Democratic side of the aisle despite notable GOP gains in Nov…

thehill.com

 

[Lastamender]

[ Knowing how to rally people and voters and supporters to one's side is not the same as eventually governing well and fairly. Governing depends on following the Constitution and the Rule of Law. How much did Trump follow the Constitution and the Rule of Law, how much of either did he attempt to change for his own interests and not those of the country? How much do his supporters know about the Constitution and Rule of Law he so often attempted to change? ]


Behind his unforeseen success in the 2016 election was a masterful use of group psychology principles

• Donald Trump's rallies enacted how Trump and his followers would like the country to be. They were, in essence, identity festivals.
• Trump succeeded by providing a categorical grid—a clear definition of groups and intergroup relations—that allowed many Americans to make sense of their lived experiences.
• Within this framework, he established himself as a prototypical American and a voice for people who otherwise felt voiceless.
• His rivals did not deploy the skills of identity leadership to present an inclusive narrative of “us.” In that context, Trump had a relatively free run.

It is easy and common to dismiss those whose political positions we disagree with as fools or knaves—or, more precisely, as fools led by knaves. Indeed, the inability of even the most experienced pundits to grasp the reality of Donald Trump's political ascendency in the 2016 presidential race parallels an unprecedented assault on the candidate and his supporters, which went so far as to question their very grip on reality. So it was that when a Suffolk University/USA Today poll asked 1,000 people in September 2015 to describe Trump in their own terms, the most popular response was “idiot/jerk/stupid/dumb,” followed by “arrogant” and “crazy/nuts,” and then “buffoon/clown/comical/joke.” Similarly, Trump's followers were dismissed in some media accounts as idiots and bigots. Consider this March 2016 headline from a commentary in Salon: “Hideous, Disgusting Racists: Let's Call Donald Trump and His Supporters Exactly What They Are.”

Such charges remind us of Theodore Abel's fascinating 1938 text Why Hitler Came into Power, but first let us be absolutely explicit: We are not comparing Trump, his supporters or their arguments to the Nazis. Instead our goal is to expose some problems in the ways that commentators analyze and explain behaviors of which we disapprove. In 1934 Abel traveled to Germany and ran an essay competition, offering a prize for autobiographies of Nazi Party members. He received around 600 responses, from which he was able to glean why so many Germans supported Adolf Hitler. Certainly many essays expressed a fair degree of anti-Semitism and some a virulent hatred of Jews. In this sense, party members were indeed racists or, at the very least, did not object to the party's well-known anti-Semitic position. But this is very different from saying that they joined and remained in the party primarily or even partially because they were racists. Abel discovered that many other motives were involved, among them a sense of the decline of Germany, a desire to rediscover past greatness, a fear of social disorder and the longing for a strong leader.

We would argue that the same is true of those who supported Trump. Some, undoubtedly, were white supremacists. All were prepared to live with his racist statements about Muslims, Mexicans and others. But are racism, bigotry and bias the main reasons people supported Trump? Certainly not. We argue instead that we need to analyze and understand the way he appealed to people and why he elicited their support.

Moreover, we need to respect those we study if we want to understand their worldview, their preferences and their decisions.

To understand how Trump appealed to voters, we start by looking at what went on inside a Trump event. For this, we are indebted to a particularly insightful analysis by journalist Gwynn Guilford, who, acting as an ethnographer, participated in Trump rallies across the state of Ohio in March 2016. We then analyze why Trump appealed to his audience, drawing on what we have referred to as the new psychology of leadership. Here we suggest that Trump's skills as a collective sense maker—someone who shaped and responded to the perspective of his audience—were very much the secret of his success.


Adapted from Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding the Allure of Trump, edited by Mari Fitzduff, with permission from ABC-CLIO/Praeger, Copyright © 2017.

Editor’s note: All but the last section of this article was written before Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, making its insights all the more remarkable. It was updated for Scientific American Mind.

Trump's Appeal: What Psychology Tells Us

Behind his unforeseen success in the 2016 election was a masterful use of group psychology principles

www.scientificamerican.com

More bullshit telling people why they think like they do. Give it up. Everyone is tired of that bullshit. The only people controlled are the ones who oppose Trump. A lot of them post crap like the OP.