Donald Trump’s contribution to the study of politics and the life sciences

If the life sciences are to have much to say about politics, there needs to be a universal element to political orientations. In this essay, I argue that the recent prominence of nativist, law-and-order, populist politicians reveals the nature of this universal element. All social units have to address bedrock dilemmas about how to deal with norm violators and how welcoming to be to outsiders as well as to proponents of new lifestyles. Might differences on these core dilemmas be the universal element of political life? Using the followers of one of the most prominent examples of a nativist political leader—Donald Trump—as an example, I present data showing that Trump’s most earnest followers are different from others—even those who share their general ideological leanings—not on traditional economic or social issues, but rather on the group-based security issues that grow out of the bedrock dilemmas of social life

Why Do Trump’s Authoritarian Followers Resist COVID-19 Authorities? Because They Are Not Really Authoritarian Followers

People’s responses to the threat posed by COVID-19 varied widely. In direct contradiction to the popular theory that Trump supporters prefer to submit to powerful people, Trump’s most enthusiastic followers actually were the most vocal in resisting the urgings of authorities to get vaccinated and to wear masks. I explain this anomaly by showing that Trump’s followers are driven less by a desire for authority and more by a desire to be secure from the threats human outsiders pose to society’s historically dominant racial, language, religious, and cultural group. Far from being authoritarians, the followers of leaders such as Donald Trump stridently oppose all authority figures who divert attention from what they believe are the real threats: immigrants, powerful foreign enemies, diversity, terrorists, and criminals. From this perspective, it is unsurprising that those with a securitarian orientation would not take seriously authorities who are concerned with the threat posed by an mRNA virus

Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics

Political scientists have long known that political involvement exacts costs but they have typically defined these costs in relatively narrow, largely economic terms. Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists. We construct and validate batteries of survey items that delineate the physical, social, and emotional costs of political engagement and administer these items to a demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. The results suggest that a large number of Americans believe their physical health has been harmed by their exposure to politics and even more report that politics has resulted in emotional costs and lost friendships

Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics

Political scientists have long known that political involvement exacts costs but they have typically defined these costs in relatively narrow, largely economic terms. Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists. We construct and validate batteries of survey items that delineate the physical, social, and emotional costs of political engagement and administer these items to a demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. The results suggest that a large number of Americans believe their physical health has been harmed by their exposure to politics and even more report that politics has resulted in emotional costs and lost friendships

Black Trust in US Legislatures

Trust is a key part of any political system. Given the very different experiences of Black people and White people in the United States, it is likely that the nature and contours of political trust varies widely from one racial group to the other. In this article, we take advantage of a specially commissioned 2018 survey to compare Black and White trust in American legislative institutions (Congress and the state legislatures). Thanks to an oversample, we also are able to zero in on variations across Black respondents, making it possible to identify the variables that push legislative trust up or down within that demographic. Our findings indicate that, relative to Whites, Black individuals are significantly more trusting of Congress and that Black people who go to church tend to be more trusting of legislative institutions while those who have experienced racism in their lives are less trusting

Twin Studies, Molecular Genetics, Politics, and Tolerance: A Response to Beckwith and Morris

Beckwith and Morris raise concerns about the value of twin studies for understanding the role of genetics in complex human behavior, but virtually all of their concerns have been raised and rebutted before. When it comes to the equal environments assumption (EEA), the best approach is to test for and control possible violations of the EEA on heritability estimates rather than merely rejecting all empirical evidence because of the possibility of EEA violations. In many respects, since the study of the genetic basis of complex human behaviors now includes many methods in addition to twin studies, Beckwith and Morris’s critique applies more to the behavioral genetics of a quarter century ago than to today’s multifaceted behavioral genetics. Twin studies establish that there is a sizeable genetic component to political orientations, thereby giving cause to look further at the nature of that role by using other methodologies, including molecular genetics.We conclude by pointing out that the normative implications of the relevance of genes to human behavior are not nearly as worrisome as Beckwith and Morris seem to believe

Physiology and political beliefs: A response to Knoll, O’Daniel, and Cusato

n a recent paper in this journal, Knoll et al. question three studies from our laboratory. In this response to that paper, we address deficiencies in their “reproduction.” Notably, we demonstrate that their data provide little evidence of a negativity bias among research subjects, suggesting a failure not only to reproduce findings from our earlier studies, but also a failure to find a widely acknowledged universal human physiological response trait. This situation raises a number of questions regarding the data on which their analyses are based. We explore these questions below and speculate that Knoll et al.’s data collection procedures may compromise their ability to speak to the external validity of earlier studies

Physiological Arousal and Self-Reported Valence for Erotica Images Correlate with Sexual Policy Preferences

Individuals do not always accurately report the forces driving their policy preferences. Such inaccuracy may result from the fact that true justifications are socially undesirable or less persuasive than competing justifications or are unavailable in conscious awareness. Because of the delicate nature of these issues, people may be particularly likely to misstate the reasons for preferences on gay marriage, abortion, abstinence-only education, and premarital sex. Advocates on both sides typically justify their preferences in terms of preserving social order, maintaining moral values, or protecting civil liberties, not in terms of their own sexual preferences. Though these are the stated reasons, in empirical tests we find that psychophysiological response to sexual images also may be a significant driver of policy attitudes.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [BCS-0826828]

Motivated viewing: Selective exposure to political images when reasoning is not involved

Motivated reasoning is an important element of politics especially in these highly polarized times. People selectively expose themselves to information in a fashion that makes it possible to embrace arguments consistent with their existing biases and ignore arguments inconsistent with those biases. Often overlooked in the research on motivated reasoning and selective exposure to information, however, is that a substantial portion of politics is about affective responses—that which makes people feel good and that which makes people feel bad. In this paper, we introduce a novel indicator of people\u27s tendency to prolong exposure to favored political images or to truncate exposure to disliked political images. This measure makes it possible to better understand individual differences regarding concepts such as negativity bias and asymmetric political attention even when substantive, issue-based information is not at play

Genetic Attributions: Sign of Intolerance or Acceptance?

Many scholars argue that people who attribute human characteristics to genetic causes also tend to hold politically and socially problematic attitudes. More specifically, public acceptance of genetic influences is believed to be associated with intolerance, prejudice, and the legitimation of social inequities and laissez-faire policies. We test these expectations with original data from two nationally representative samples that allow us to identify the American public’s attributional patterns across 18 diverse traits. Key findings are (1) genetic attributions are actually more likely to be made by liberals, not conservatives; (2) genetic attributions are associated with higher, not lower, levels of tolerance of vulnerable individuals; and (3) genetic attributions do not correlate with unseemly racial attitudes