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from the and-a-polite-discussion-ensued... dept.
Recently published in Journal of Social and Political Psychology by Thomas F. Pettigrew seeks to understand the psychological profile of Trump supporters:
The Trump movement is not singular within the United States (the Know Nothing movement in the 1850s, the Wallace movement in the 1960s, and the more recent Tea Party Movement). Moreover, other democracies have seen similar movements (e.g., Austria's Freedom Party, Belgium's Vlaams Blok, France's National Front, Germany's Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), and Britain's U.K. Independence Party (UKIP).
In virtually all these cases, the tinder especially involved male nativists and populists who were less educated than the general population. But this core was joined by other types of voters as well. Five highly interrelated characteristics stand out that are central to a social psychological analysis – authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, outgroup prejudice, the absence of intergroup contact and relative deprivation.No one factor describes Trump's supporters. But an array of factors – many of them reflecting five major social psychological phenomena can help to account for this extraordinary political event: authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, prejudice, relative deprivation, and intergroup contact.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 07 2017, @02:06PM
I read the paper. It's a weak modern attempt to reprise The Mind of Adolf Hitler. As a work in the social sciences, it distinctly lacks rigor and was composed to stigmatize voters who supported Trump. There's no deeper quantitative analysis of causality producing similar trends across very different countries. Even a moderately intelligent person with no background in quantitative methods or data analysis could have crafted a better hypothesis than these authors did.
For example, a serious researcher could have explored a number of different explanatory variables like the velocity of demographic change, of monetary policy, of trade agreements, of shifts in the composition of economies, of indices of corruption and democracy. All they limply threw out was maybe automation has something to do with it. And, oh yeah yeah maybe some of the people are pissed they lost their well-paying jobs in manufacturing because CEOs and Wall Street banks wanted to earn a quick windfall for themselves with outsourcing.
But they didn't do any of that blindingly obvious analysis because their purpose is not to understand, but to undermine the intellectual legitimacy of a political phenomenon they don't personally like. Poor show, professor, poor show.
Washington DC delenda est.