Responses to belief-conflicting information: Justification of support for Donald Trump

These studies take a dissonance theory perspective to understanding why individuals support Donald Trump as president of the United States despite accusations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal activity. Participants from the US provided open-ended responses to questions that asked why they support Trump and how they justify their support given the allegations against him. Study 1 was conducted in 2019 two months before Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In this study, 7 categories of reasons for supporting Trump, and 3 categories of justification despite allegations, were identified. Study 2 was conducted in 2019 two days after a vote to impeach Trump. Study 3 was conducted in 2022 two days after Trump was arraigned for his involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol Building. Results from Studies 2 and 3 replicated the categories of support and justification. Across studies, the reasons given to justify support of Trump despite allegations of wrongdoing were stating that they disbelieved the allegation, claiming that others do similar misdeeds, and stating that they care about his policies, not his personal life. The current results suggest that individuals in a naturalistic context may choose a number of different strategies in response to information that conflicts with their important beliefs, including denying the veracity of information, increasing the importance of consonant information, directing attention to the immoral acts of others, and making cognitions irrelevant to the dissonant relationship. Study 3 provided evidence that some of these processes may be influenced by dissonance discomfort. These results are unlike those of most laboratory research on dissonance theory, in which participants are given only one dissonance reduction opportunity.