Changing America

Yes, Trump and Sanders Are Actually Changing America

They’ve released a flood of hidden beliefs, and we’ll be living with the effects for years.

By Troy Campbell

The most startling thing about the 2016 presidential race has been the rise of two strident populists, Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left. Though they stand for very different things, Trump and Sanders have opened floodgates of public opinion—with powerful and often discomfiting results.

Trump, for one, has declared that this is precisely what he has accomplished: “We've opened up a very big discussion that needed to be opened up,” he noted at the last GOP debate. And Sanders has proudly not backed down from the “socialist” label, and in doing so forced the most leftist political discussion in modern times.

The question is why—and why now. Political analysts have taken their stabs at the answer, but to understand what’s at work, it also helps to look deeper, into the psychology of voters themselves. In the face of great unhappiness in certain large sectors of the population—those who feel they are falling behind for one reason or another—Trump and Sanders trigger an important reaction. They have become what people in my profession of psychology see as enabling dissenters.

Both candidates succeed because they draw out popular feelings of dissatisfaction. But their effect is more than that: They have legitimized for discussion “fringe beliefs” that millions of Americans beforehand had been unsure of or too shy to fully embrace, but nonetheless felt strongly about. They do not create new beliefs; instead they appeal to unspoken feelings often held by people who have recently felt increased economic strife and political disenfranchisement.

Sanders appeals to what used to be known as the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, especially mostly middle-class citizens, who believe America is being taken over by Wall Street and other pernicious traditional powers. Trump appeals to nationalistic conservatives, especially noncollege-educated whites, who believe America is being taken from them by liberal values, minorities and immigrants.

And there’s another important psychological factor at work here: Once outed, these opinions don’t go away. By unapologetically synthesizing and stating these different dissenting opinions, Sanders and Trump help these fringe beliefs flourish, and their expression is likely to outlive both candidates’ campaigns. Today, Trump supporters voice opinions that yesterday they may have been unsure of or publically afraid to acknowledge for fear of being alone and called a “racist” or “bigot.” Likewise, today, Sanders supporters voice opinions that yesterday they may have been unsure of or publically afraid to knowledge for fear of being alone and called a “socialist.”

Decades of psychological studies help to explain this phenomenon. In one of these experiments, the famous Asch conformity trials of the 1950s, test subjects were far more likely to express a dissenting opinion, parting from the norm when asked a question, if someone in front of them did it before them, acting as the “enabling dissenter.”

Now millions of Americans are shouting these fringe beliefs from rallies, to college campuses, to endless tweets and uncomfortable holiday dinner tables. Even if Sanders and Trump fade away, they will leave this legacy behind. Long after their wild hair no longer graces the front pages of newspapers, their equally wild ideas will flow through the news and in the hearts of the masses.

The legitimization of these beliefs has little to do with whether these beliefs are true. Legitimacy is a social construct. It is earned in part through logic and truths, but it is also achieved through human psychology. And when it comes to human psychology, truth has no privileged place at the dinner table. The same psychology that often drives people to the revolutionary truths can also send them racing toward destructive falsehoods. Enabling dissenters can have a wide range of effects—helping people find the courage to stand up for true justice, or allowing them to espouse their selfish ways.

This is why we can—and should—talk about Sanders and Trump together. Regardless as to whether either or both represent logical truths, the same psychological forces are driving much of their societal popularity.

In the Asch studies, the enabling dissenter was just a peer. Sanders and Trump are much more legitimate than peers. They are a senator and a billionaire. They are massively popular figures who gain further cultural legitimacy from talk show appearances and endless news coverage. The media consistently legitimizes them and their beliefs simply by discussing them. Contradicting or criticizing their positions essentially has the same effect: it makes clear they’re worth arguing against. I am, in part, legitimizing both politicians right now, just by writing this article.

These politicians capitalize on more than a predisposition to believe; they often capitalize on a psychological need to believe. For different reasons and motives, many Sanders and Trump supporters feel a giant “threat to hope.” Today, they need hope and Sanders and Trump are the only ones who seem extreme enough to care about their respective needs. And whether these politicians can truthfully and ethically provide for those needs is not the issue.

When people need to believe, that need can bulldoze reason and doubt. Many Sanders and Trump supporters are like that kid with bad acne who needs to believe that advertised miracle acne cure is real. Sanders or Trump might be promising some real stuff, but what is most important for voters is just the promise. Gustavo de Mello and colleagues found when people feel a “threat to hope” and desire to personally believe in a promise (e.g. a medicinal product) they require less evidence to become convinced of the promise and spend less time rationally analyzing the promise. They just buy into the promise—skepticism be damned.

Many Americans seem not to realize just how large a role human psychology plays in whether a public figure is seen as legitimate. If people realize this, they wouldn’t believe they could easily undermine Sanders and Trump with logic and facts alone. Look at all the pundits (and all your Facebook friends) who have predicted that both candidates—but especially Trump—would fall after his latest outrageous statement.

In a classic experiment, professor Charles Lord and colleagues showed how debate and facts actually increase, rather than reduce, polarization. They found when people read two equally valid pieces of evidence, one that supports their political views and one that contradicts their political views, they come out of the balanced reading with more unbalanced views.

They call this phenomenon biased assimilation. If people are given a little legitimate support of their beliefs, they can deploy that against a sea of contradicting evidence. If a potentially legitimate politician agrees with a voter, that politician becomes the voter’s bedrock source. More and more debate against that politician often just makes that bedrock stronger.

Thus, with the help of an enabling dissenter, an individual can stay strong in a fringe belief. But an individual’s belief is even stronger as part of an army of enabling dissenters. Sanders and Trump have succeeded because they have built such armies. Today, once gun-shy believers have come together in passionate communion, and this communion is the final piece that has truly solidified these beliefs.

The most powerful way Trump and Sanders have legitimized their fringe beliefs is through social facilitation. Today, a person can easily find a local or virtual community of like-minded believers to become a part of. In the past, one could not easily inquire whether others were “socialist” or “for banning Muslims from entering the USA.” Now, one can just ask, “Do you support Sanders or Trump?” (or find someone wearing a hat) to get the answers to those questions.

On nearly every college campus, including probably outside my building right now, there’s a Sanders group. They are there to answer questions and help one become a part of a movement. And on the other side, the Washington Post recently wrote how Trump can be a gateway for conversations and ideas central to groups as extreme as the Ku Klux Klan, a group that notably Trump says he does not support. Again, we see how radically different ideas succeed through similar social facilitation mechanisms.

Once integrated among others, these supporters can isolate and intensify. After each new attack on their beliefs, their social network will support them with a tweet or article to post in defiant reply against the attack. And now bonded together, these groups are built to outlast their catalyst politicians. Just as the tea party ideals and Obama’s universal health care ideals have and will continue to influence national politics, these new socialist and Trump-ish ideals will continue to do the same.

The ideas will live on for two key reasons. First, people have become part of social networks and these social networks will keep people in contact with like-minded others and ideas. Even if their respective politicians were to fall from national media attention, they would now still be surrounded by the ideas via their groups.

Second, and most importantly, Sanders and Trump supports have crossed the line of public commitment. It is a long road back after you have publicly declared in conversation or on Facebook that you are a socialist or you are against allowing Muslims into the country. When a person makes a belief public, that belief strengthens. Sanders and Trump have turned many people’s unspoken thoughts into battle cries. In doing so, they have strengthened those beliefs so much, those beliefs will outlast their campaigns.

This might be a good thing. As there may be logical good ideas in one or both of these politicians fringe beliefs. Regardless of the validity of the fringe beliefs, what is true is the groups that formed around the beliefs formed not just because of logical or even selfish forces. They formed because of social psychological forces that began with one uncompromising politician—or two—playing the role of an enabling dissenter, resulting in a massive group solidifying the declared fringe beliefs.

Many Americans in the middle cherish the thought that soon one or both of these fringe belief preaching politicians will be gone. Whether that happens, their beliefs will live on. They have been outed, and there is no going back.