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Melanie Tannenbaum has written several interesting blog posts about ambiguity intolerance and its connection to the early popular support Donald Trump is currently enjoying. Roughly speaking, people who are not comfortable without a plan of action or a path forward are said to have more ambiguity intolerance.
What may be surprising, however, is the research showing that people high in ambiguity intolerance feel so profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty, they will often prefer a slightly negative yet certain outcome to a potentially-more-positive, uncertain one. In other words, people may find Donald Trump to be disagreeable, abrasive, or downright unlikeable. But because of his reputation for "telling it like it is" and "being honest to a fault," they also feel certain that they can believe Trump when he says he's telling the truth.
Tannenbaum points out that despite a record of Trump making contradictory comments in the past, people tend to believe his convictions on what he says because nobody would say those "non-normative" things if they really didn't believe it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by slinches on Wednesday August 19 2015, @05:55AM
This article isn't really about people not liking political correctness. It's about why some people root for Trump when everyone knows he's an intolerable ass. The reason they like him right now is that he's being an intolerable ass to the whole of the political establishment, a pretty much universally hated entity. Trump is just doing in politics what he's done his entire career, call people names and degrade them to get attention. He just happened to pick a ripe target this time.
The motivations for anti-PC people are different (which I would tend to think I'm one of). That is essentially driven by placing a greater emphasis on clarity and consistency in language over the appearance of being empathetic. The biggest issue I see with PC speech is that it isn't often effective at actually being less offensive. Whatever euphemisms are contrived, they quickly pick up the same connotations that the original "offensive" term had making it no better than where it started. Instead I think we should focus on education to help eliminate the prejudices that lead people to use language in a derogatory manner. Then we can stop chasing language around and define terms based on their descriptive qualities without causing unnecessary offense.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday August 19 2015, @07:36AM
PC is a rather vague term that includes a lot of stuff, and the meaning tends to change over time as society changes. For example, once it was PC to put more than two options for gender on a form, now it is mostly accepted that it's just necessary and the right thing to do.
There will always be a debate at the fringe, but most of what people like Trump say is clearly harmful.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @09:42AM
I'm particularly miffed when I see the PC "SJW" types use the term PoC(person of colour) constantly. How is that term any different than 'coloured' or 'darky'?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 19 2015, @12:09PM
It's especially aggravating when someone dances around trying to avoid describing a dark skinned person by the color of their skin or even chastising you for doing so. Meanwhile they are more than happy to call themselves white, or complain about the "rich white man".
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:13PM
I'm not sure how tall Trump is. If he is 6 ft tall or more, then he has all of the qualities that most people look for in their leaders. Leaders don't have to be likeable, they are only required to inspire faith. A plain speaking asshole inspires far more faith than the mealy-mouthed little weenie, no matter how nice the weenie talks while on campaign.