# Resolved: You cannot understand Trump's support without understanding RWA and SDO **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [May 5, 2025, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933 "2025-05-05T23:27:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/41 "2025-06-01T00:25:26Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Kanye, maybe? Can’t say it’s something I’ve looked into. Also, wasn’t RFK Jr a Democrat until, like, yesterday? I have no idea whether Dr Oz and RFK are more popular with black or white Americans, for that matter. RFK apparently did produce an antivaxx film aimed at the black community: > **[RFK Jr. is courting Black voters, a group he once targeted with vaccine...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/rfk-jr-black-voters-vaccine-disinformation-rcna139459)** > > The independent presidential candidate produced a documentary-style film in 2021 that spread vaccine disinformation to the Black community. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/42 "2025-06-01T00:37:10Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > whereas AFAIK Trump hasn’t done or talked about anything like repealing laws to protect women from abuse. [Department of Education reverts to Trump's Title IX rule](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/02/03/department-education-reverts-trumps-title-ix-rule#:~:text=This%20is%20an%20incredibly%20disappointing,organization%2C%20said%20in%20a%20statement). The Trump administration has been actively involved in modifying regulations related to Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, including sexual harassment and assault. These changes have stirred debate, with critics arguing they could hinder survivors’ access to justice and supporters emphasizing fairness and due process for the accused. - **Reverting to 2020 Regulations:** The Trump administration, through the U.S. Department of Education, announced in February 2025 that it would officially enforce the 2020 Title IX regulations enacted during the first Trump term. This action followed a federal judge’s decision to strike down the Biden administration’s expanded regulations from April 2024. - **Emphasis on Due Process for the Accused:** The 2020 regulations emphasize due process for individuals accused of sexual misconduct. This includes requiring live hearings where accused individuals can cross-examine their accusers through an advisor. - **Narrower Definition of Sexual Harassment:** The 2020 rules adopted by the Trump administration narrow the definition of sexual harassment to conduct that is “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive”. This change requires stricter criteria for an incident to be considered sexual harassment under Title IX. - **Limited Off-Campus Responsibility:** The 2020 regulations restrict the scope of cases colleges and universities are obligated to address, limiting their responsibility to investigate incidents that occur within their own programs or activities. This means many off-campus cases may not be subject to Title IX procedures. - **Enforcement Consistent with Executive Order:** The Education Department’s approach to enforcing Title IX is guided by a Trump executive order that declares there are two sexes, male and female, and mandates consistent enforcement with that directive > **[Justice Department’s ending of grants for domestic violence programs is...](https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/14/politics/american-bar-association-domestic-violence-grants-likely-unconstitutional)** > > A federal judge said Wednesday that the Trump Justice Department likely engaged in unconstitutional retaliation when it cut off grants to American Bar Association programs assisting victims of domestic violence. > CNN — > > A federal judge said Wednesday that the Trump Justice Department likely engaged in unconstitutional retaliation when it cut off grants to American Bar Association programs assisting victims of domestic violence. > > The [preliminary order from US District Judge Casey Cooper](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279842/gov.uscourts.dcd.279842.28.0_2.pdf) requires the Trump administration to pay out the $2 million in grant funding it still owes to the programs, which provide training to lawyers who work with victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. > **[Domestic Violence Services Are in Jeopardy, Providers Say](https://www.thetrace.org/2025/04/trump-domestic-violence-services-funding/)** > > The Trump administration’s push to cut federal grants has domestic violence groups considering layoffs, reduced hours, and shelter closures. > Adding to the uncertainty is the Republican spending package Congress passed in March. Pushed through with some Democratic support to avert a government shutdown, the package empowered the Trump administration to [cancel or redirect federal dollars](https://www.thetrace.org/2025/03/budget-gop-gun-violence-prevention-research/). Domestic violence groups are now bracing for the possibility that Trump will stop the OVW funding once the existing grants expire at the end of the fiscal year in September. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/43 "2025-06-01T00:57:34Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Firstly, you should be more skeptical of social science in general, because studies like this regularly fail to replicate. Secondly, this doesn’t address my point at all, which is not that personality doesn’t correlate with ideology, but with how that correlation is interpreted. Science does have a replication crisis. That doesn’t change the fact that racism, sexism, RWA and SDO have been found to correlate to Trump support in a variety of studies. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Imagine if hypothetical conservative sociologists in the 60’s had defined a ‘hippy’ personality type that makes people want to take drugs, drop out and live in a commune, and protest against the Vietnam war. A personality type that causes people to rebel against the established order, and disrupt society (bad things in the view of these researchers). It’s a good bet there were average personality differences between young people who took drugs, dropped out, and/or joined protests, and the (implicitly assumed to be normal and responsible) ones who got a corporate job, worked hard and didn’t rock the boat - and you could create a questionnaire whose results would correlate with these differences. Maybe they would even show up on an MRI. Would doing this help us understand 60s politics? I don’t believe so, and I think it would demonstrate some pretty biased assumptions on the part of the researchers. We have those. In the five factor model, openness to experience is correlated with liberalism. > **[Openness to experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience)** > > Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual curiosity, and challenging authority (psychological liberalism). A great deal of psychometric research has demonstrated that these facets or qualities are significantly correlated. Thus, Openness te... Jonathan Haidt found that liberals have 2 factor morality while conservatives have 5 factor morality. [![](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-B9780124072367000024-f02-01-9780124072367.jpg) ](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-B9780124072367000024-f02-01-9780124072367.jpg) Liberals also score lower on a need for cognitive closure, while conservatives tend to score higher. Politics plays a huge role in how we act as a civilization. Understanding the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of it is important. Its like asking people not to study how to increase crop yields or improve antibiotic effectiveness. A lot of nations have descended into tyranny and dysfunction due to politics, and some of those nations have been democracies that experienced backsliding. Venezuela used to be a functioning democracy, now its a dictatorship. Hungary is on the way to becoming a dictatorship. Understanding this stuff is important. I mention venezuela because its not just right wing politics that can be dysfunctional. Mao probably set China back 30 years. Stalin set Russia back dramatically, who knows what Russia would’ve been like in 2025 if the communists and Stalin had never taken over and created a culture of oppression and terror. Maybe it’d be more like the Baltic states (a rich democracy) instead of a warlike, barely upper income country run by a strongman. > [@DemonTree](#): > > For a real world comparison, look at the evidence showing liberals are less happy and more likely to suffer from mental illness than conservatives: I agree. Part of that could be higher ACE scores (adverse childhood experiences like various kinds of abuse and neglect). Liberals are more likely to have had childhood trauma. A higher ACE score also predisposes you to endless poor life outcomes including a higher likelihood of mental illness. > **[Personality, Childhood Experience, and Political Ideology](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6867614/#S6)** > > This paper studies the relationship between the “big five” personality traits and political ideology in a large US representative sample (N=14,672). In line with research in political psychology, “openness to experience” is found to predict liberal... > A theoretical interpretation of these observed effects of childhood experience on political ideology falls outside the scope if this paper but merits further research and discussion. A tentative logic would be that the experience of childhood trauma, as well as school and neighborhood insecurity, may instill a heightened sense of vulnerability in individuals. In turn, a sense of individual vulnerability is likely to incline people to political views that favor social programs and government intervention if a need arises. It could also be speculated that individuals who suffered childhood maltreatment will be wary of authority, while the added complexity of dealing with negative childhood emotions may draw them to a greater variety of experiences and less impulse control. Such psychological and behavioral consequences of childhood trauma may distance these individuals from conservative principles. However, prudence is required in interpreting these results and, ultimately, this research remains agnostic on the precise dynamics that link childhood experience to political ideology. This empirical work may serve to corroborate past research on the influence of childhood experience ([Erikson 1968](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6867614/#R17), [Erikson 1963](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6867614/#R16), [Carver & Scheier 2000](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6867614/#R10), [Sameroff, Lewis & Miller 2000](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6867614/#R51), [Campbell 2006](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6867614/#R8)) and hopefully spur new research. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/44 "2025-06-01T01:39:11Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > That’s pretty horrifying. Why on earth would they want to do that? Because they hate women (and also homeless people), and want to be able to keep on abusing them with impunity. The answer being horrible doesn’t mean that it’s not true. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Also, wasn’t RFK Jr a Democrat until, like, yesterday? Well, he said he was, and that was the only sense in which he was. He’s never held Democratic positions, and he’s never been elected anything as a Democrat. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I mention venezuela because its not just right wing politics that can be dysfunctional. Mao probably set China back 30 years. Stalin set Russia back dramatically, who knows what Russia would’ve been like in 2025 if the communists and Stalin had never taken over and created a culture of oppression and terror. How is a right-winger like Stalin a warning against left-wing politics? Lenin, yes, was probably left, but Stalin wasn’t much different from the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/45 "2025-06-01T01:55:26Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > [Personality Traits, Mental Illness, and Ideology | Psychology Today United Kingdom](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/unique-everybody-else/202103/personality-traits-mental-illness-and-ideology) Psychology Today: “Survey data show that extreme liberals have poorer mental health than conservatives.” Note that this comparison isn’t between liberals and conservatives, or extreme liberals and extreme conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/46 "2025-06-01T02:02:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > How is a right-winger like Stalin a warning against left-wing politics? Because he got into power _using_ left wing politics, even if one considers him personally right wing. Not that it matters much; Stalin was mostly about Stalin, not left or right. Authoritarianism with himself as the absolute authority. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/47 "2025-06-01T19:36:02Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > We have those. > > In the five factor model, openness to experience is correlated with liberalism. That is not the same thing as characterising a negative personality type specifically to describe (some of) your political opposition. The underlying assumption that liberal beliefs are good and correct is very obvious if you don’t share it. I’m also not sure how meaningful it is to say openness to experience correlates with liberalism when Wikipedia describes it as having six facets, one of which is challenging authority (psychological liberalism). If you define a construct that includes psychological liberalism, it’s unsurprising if it correlates with self-identification as a liberal. > [@Wikipedia](#): > > Openness involves six [facets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facet_(psychology)), or dimensions: active [imagination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination) (fantasy), [aesthetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic) sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual [curiosity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity), and challenging authority (psychological liberalism). > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Jonathan Haidt found that liberals have 2 factor morality while conservatives have 5 factor morality. The first chart shows that liberals place a lower importance on loyalty, authority and sanctity than conservatives, not no importance. But I think there’s a deeper problem in terms of the assumptions behind the questions: when looking at loyalty to an ingroup, for example, questions usually assume the ingroup is the person’s country, while Western liberals are generally not nationalistic, and instead treat members of various oppressed groups as their ingroup, and political conservatives, especially movements like Maga and Christian fundamentalists, as their outgroup. If questions don’t address this difference, they can easily miss pro-loyalty attitudes in liberals. For example, the refusal to “throw \ under the bus”, even to save democracy, and knowing they will be treated far worse if you lose the election, is likely an expression of loyalty. The sanctity/purity factor is similar: the common saying that “if 10 people sit at a table with 1 Nazi, there are 11 Nazis” is clearly a left-wing expression of the purity foundation. Sitting down with a Nazi will contaminate you with Nazism (an interesting contrast to the approvingly-quoted Bible verses about Jesus sharing meals with tax collectors and sinners). The modern left is famous for excessive purity policing of members, but if the quiz questions don’t address these expressions of the sanctity foundation, they won’t pick up on relevant beliefs. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Politics plays a huge role in how we act as a civilization. Understanding the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of it is important. Its like asking people not to study how to increase crop yields or improve antibiotic effectiveness. A lot of nations have descended into tyranny and dysfunction due to politics, and some of those nations have been democracies that experienced backsliding. I don’t think we shouldn’t study it, but we should be cautious in how we interpret the findings. Correlations are famously tricky things. Here’s a study that seems to show the genetic component of personality factors does not influence the genetic component of political beliefs; instead, for social and military views, it is the other way around (political beliefs influence personality, and for economic ones, they are independent. > **[Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and...](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/)** > > The assumption in the personality and politics literature is that a person's personality motivates them to develop certain political attitudes later in life. This assumption is founded on the simple correlation between the two constructs and the ... (This contains another example of the bias I was talking about, not from the authors but summarised by them: > [@](#): > > For example, [Jost et al. (2003)](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R50) suggest that exposure to threat and uncertainty in the political environment evokes fear and anxiety which heightens epistemic and existential motivations, resulting in increased confidence in the “correctness” of one’s attitudes and bolstering one’s self-concept. From this perspective, political conservatism serves as a coping mechanism that allows people to manage these threats, leaving conservatives more intolerant of ambiguity and desiring high levels of order, structure, and cognitive closure ([Carney et al. 2008](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R15); [Jost et al. 2003](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R50)). Instead of allowing that there might be valid arguments in favour of political conservatism, they explain it as a ‘coping mechanism’. The study also contains this passage: > [@](#): > > Personality psychologists have long held the view that political attitudes are part of a person’s personality. The Openness dimension of the Five-Factor Model was explicitly designed to include a values dimension to capture moral beliefs and include attitudinal content that resembles political conservatism ([Costa and McCrae 1995a](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R22); [Van Heil, Kossowska, and Mervielde 2000](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R86)). This part of Openness has been described as the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and political values ([Moutafi, Furnham, and Crump 2006](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R71); [Zimprich, Allemand, and Dellenbach 2009](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R94)). That is, personality psychologists consider political values part of one’s personality, and not independent constructs. However, this understanding is often missing in the current literature. This might be due in part to the use of abbreviated scales. The values dimension in the original 244-item NEO-PI-R explicitly measures political values ([McRae and Costa 1987](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809096/#R63)). Due to the length of the scale and copyrights placed on it, other personality psychologists have reduced the factors into scales that do not include all the subfactors theorized by McCrae and Costa. However, the reduced measures of Openness were designed to capture the variance in the original Openness super-factor, which contained the explicit political values subdimension. As such, because political values are viewed as a subcomponent of Openness and not as an independent factor, political attitudes should be viewed as part and parcel of the same latent construct. From this perspective, when it comes to Openness predicting political attitudes, researchers have been not only comparing apples to apples, but predicting an apple with the same apple. It’s similar to what I wrote above, that the ‘openness’ personality factor includes political views within it, so it’s unsurprising it correlates with such views. IMO a major issue with this sort of research is that by lumping a bunch of correlated traits together and giving it a name, it feels like you’ve explained something, but in practice you aren’t necessarily any further forward. It just means you now have to explain why some people are high in RWA, instead of why some people support Trump, and it’s going to come back to the same factors either way. * * * > [@Chronos](#): > > Because they hate women (and also homeless people), and want to be able to keep on abusing them with impunity. The answer being horrible doesn’t mean that it’s not true. People rarely act senselessly or hate others for no reason (for bad reasons, sure). It’s obvious why Republicans would want to ban aiding the homeless, because helping them attracts more of them, and people living on the streets tend to create a nuisance by begging, taking over public property for their personal use, generating mess and noise, and scaring passersby by acting erratically. If someone doesn’t particularly care about helping rough sleepers, trying to drive them away is the logical solution. But people fleeing domestic violence rarely create a public nuisance, so it’s not clear to me why they were included in the bill. > [@Chronos](#): > > Well, he said he was, and that was the only sense in which he was. He’s never held Democratic positions, and he’s never been elected anything as a Democrat. Hmmm. > [@](#): > > Some energy and environmental lobbyists are worried that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial past would thwart his Senate confirmation if President-elect Barack Obama tapped him to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. > > A well-respected climate lawyer, Kennedy has also been in the spotlight for his controversial environmental statements. Last year, for instance, he said that global warming skeptics should be treated as “traitors,” which garnered the ire of Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose deep skepticism about the causes of climate change is well-known. > [@](#): > > “This would speak volumes as to where Obama is going with his appointments,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist William Kovacs. “A Kennedy appointment is as liberal as you can possibly get. There is no one [candidate] based firmer in extremes.” [https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/rfk-jr-too-controversial-for-epa-015403](https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/rfk-jr-too-controversial-for-epa-015403) Seems like a prime example of horseshoe theory to me. 🤷 > [@Chronos](#): > > How is a right-winger like Stalin a warning against left-wing politics? Lenin, yes, was probably left, but Stalin wasn’t much different from the Nazis. Stalin was a communist who overthrew the established hierarchy, collectivised farms, banned private enterprise, and operated a centrally planned economy. He also suppressed religion and persecuted religious leaders, and vilified and persecuted Kulaks (wealthier peasants who owned land and employed others) as class enemies. Those are far-left policies. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/48 "2025-06-01T20:18:32Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > But I think there’s a deeper problem in terms of the assumptions behind the questions: when looking at loyalty to an ingroup, for example, questions usually assume the ingroup is the person’s country, while Western liberals are generally not nationalistic, and instead treat members of various oppressed groups as their ingroup, and political conservatives, especially movements like Maga and Christian fundamentalists, as their outgroup. If questions don’t address this difference, they can easily miss pro-loyalty attitudes in liberals. For example, the refusal to “throw under the bus”, even to save democracy, and knowing they will be treated far worse if you lose the election, is likely an expression of loyalty. One might certainly say that liberals are loyal to various minorities. But that’s not in-group loyalty, because most of us aren’t members of most of those groups. If I’m a heterosexual white cismale, then gays, black people, women, and transgendered people are all out-groups relative to me. > [@DemonTree](#): > > People rarely act senselessly or hate others for no reason (for bad reasons, sure). OK, so why do domestic abusers abuse in the first place? It’s the same root cause. > [@DemonTree](#): > > Some energy and environmental lobbyists are worried that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial past would thwart his Senate confirmation if President-elect Barack Obama tapped him to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Well, did he? It’s kind of hard to say “Obama didn’t pick him, therefore he’s a Democrat”. What happened was that, either Obama never even considered him at all, or he considered him and then decided that he wasn’t a good match. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/49 "2025-06-01T20:40:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > One might certainly say that liberals are loyal to various minorities. But that’s not in-group loyalty, because most of us aren’t members of most of those groups. If I’m a heterosexual white cismale, then gays, black people, women, and transgendered people are all out-groups relative to me. Of course it’s ingroup loyalty. Ingroups don’t have to be defined by those things. They’re your political allies, automatically assumed to be on your side unless they demonstrate otherwise. (And if they do demonstrate otherwise, they’ll be treated very differently by liberals.) ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/50 "2025-06-01T22:45:30Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > I’m saying the experts conservatives trust are quacks and they are trusted _because_ they are quacks. They don’t seriously evaluate evidence; rather they traffic in reassurance. Which is what modern conservatives crave The question is how that came to pass. Back in the day, it wasn’t conservatives that distrusted the experts, at least not on the issue of vaccines. The stereotype, as I remember it, was that the people who distrusted vaccines were hippy dippy liberals and, as you mentioned, poor and uneducated Black people. For anecdotal evidence that this was the stereotype back then, I’d point to an episode of Law & Order SVU, where Martin Mull guest stared as a doctor who catered to the former. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2025, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/51 "2025-06-01T23:24:30Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > That is not the same thing as characterising a negative personality type specifically to describe (some of) your political opposition. The underlying assumption that liberal beliefs are good and correct is very obvious if you don’t share it. Valid point. However right wing authoritarianism is called right wing because it means someone supports the existing system. In the USSR, people who supported the communists were the right wing authoritarians and the people pushing for reforms like more market economic policies and more personal freedom were seen as the enemies by the RWA types in the USSR. So in the USSR, the RWA were the ones that supported communism because that was the established system. As far as your statement of labeling your political opposition as bad people, there are objective metrics. People who score higher in RWA and SDO are more bigoted. There are endless forms of bigotry (sexism, racism, nativism). Granted, this is expected since conservatives score higher on Haidt’s markers like purity, authority and in-group. These are all threatened by out-groups. Because liberals do not care about purity, authority or in-groups as much as conservatives, and because liberals value fairness and harm more than conservatives, liberals only see the harm done by oppression of out-groups, while conservatives more see the threats out-groups pose to purity and in-group loyalty. Brain scans show liberals feel more compassion than conservatives. Your statement that conservatives have better mental health is likely true, just like the statement that liberals feel more compassion seems to be true. > **[New neuroscience research shows liberals experience more empathy than...](https://www.psypost.org/new-neuroscience-research-shows-liberals-experience-more-empathy-than-conservatives-when-they-imagine-others-suffering/)** > > A recent study in Israel used brain scans to explore the differences in empathy between political liberals and conservatives. The researchers found that when imagining other people suffering, liberals showed stronger brain reactions associated with... I think the issue is that there is a sociopolitical continuum that extends beyond a particular culture. A conservative in the US regarding the subject of women’s rights would be considered a liberal in Afghanistan. A liberal regarding taxing the rich in the US would be considered a conservative in China under Mao. If you assume there is an objective metric that goes from 1-10 on various measurements, in the US maybe a conservative scores a 4 and the liberal scores a 7 on some measurements. But the scale goes beyond that, and it varies by nation and culture. Its often said that a democrat in the US is a conservative in Europe. And like I said, a conservative in the US would be fairly liberal under a far more right wing regime. Having said that, it fundamentally comes down to utilitarianism. People high in RWA and SDO benefit (psychologically and materially) from a social hierarchy where there are more rights and privileges for those at the top. However I feel like as a society, we have come to the conclusion that the benefits experienced by a small group of people higher on the social ladder should not outweigh the well being of all the people lower on the ladder rungs beneath them. Do you have a good argument for why a system that gives fewer rights, acceptance or integration for out-groups has benefits that need to be followed on a society wide level? From what I can see, the main benefit is the psychological benefits people high in RWA and SDO feel from keeping the social hierarchy intact. Thats like saying a corporation feeling motivated by a strong sense of desire to improve profits mean that their desire for quarterly profits makes it an objective good, irrelevant to the damage caused to the environment, labor force, etc by this philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/52 "2025-06-02T00:18:12Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Because liberals do not care about purity I get what you’re saying, it’s just funny to read “liberals do not care about purity” when the more liberal party in the US is notorious for tearing itself apart with all kinds of purity tests between its various factions. In one case it is a problem of outgroups trying “to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” and in the other ethical vegans refusing to form a block with environmental vegans. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/53 "2025-06-02T00:25:36Z")
That’s true. I guess when I meant purity I more meant purity along national, sexual, racial or religious lines. The left can be very obsessed with purity when it comes to ideology. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/54 "2025-06-02T02:27:27Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > The question is how that came to pass. Back in the day, it wasn’t conservatives that distrusted the experts, at least not on the issue of vaccines. I suspect it’s a combination of the American Right become ever-more conspiracy theory minded and ideologically utterly selfish and cruel. They are more likely to oppose vaccines because vaccines are portrayed as a social good that helps _other_ people, which they consider evil and anathema. It reeks of the “sin of empathy”. And their conspiratorial mindset inclines them to justify rejecting vaccines with, well, a conspiracy theory. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/55 "2025-06-02T12:21:48Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > That’s true. I guess when I meant purity I more meant purity along national, sexual, racial or religious lines. > > The left can be very obsessed with purity when it comes to ideology. That was one of my points above. For the left, purity mainly features as ideological purity (and if questions don’t specifically ask about that, it will be missed in surveys). That’s why left-wingers have moral panics about the alt-right recruiting their kids with online memes and Andrew Tate turning their sons into misogynists, while right-wingers have moral panics that blue-haired teachers with pride flags on the wall will convince their kids it’s good to be gay. “Evil shadowy figures are corrupting your kids!” is quintessential purity foundation: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/opinion/sunday/white-supremacist-recruitment.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/opinion/sunday/white-supremacist-recruitment.html) > **[The alt-right’s silent indoctrination of young men](https://temple-news.com/the-alt-rights-silent-indoctrination-of-young-men/)** > > A student argues for people to know about the threats of the alt-right pipeline and the subtle signs of indoctrination. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/56 "2025-06-02T12:28:23Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > I get what you’re saying, it’s just funny to read “liberals do not care about purity” when the more liberal party in the US is notorious for tearing itself apart with all kinds of purity tests between its various factions. Notorious for it, maybe, but that doesn’t mean it actually happens. There are plenty of pro-life democrats, pro-gun democrats, etc. in high elected offices. Can you find any pro-choice or anti-gun Republicans? ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/57 "2025-06-02T13:30:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There are plenty of pro-life democrats, pro-gun democrats, etc. in high elected offices. Pro-gun maybe, but pro-life views seem to be dying out among Democrats: [https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/03/henry-cuellar-texas-2024-00109596](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/03/henry-cuellar-texas-2024-00109596) And on other issues it may be the other way around. Are there any elected Democrats who oppose same-sex marriage, for example? ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/58 "2025-06-02T14:23:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There are plenty of pro-life democrats, pro-gun democrats, etc. in high elected offices. Can you find any pro-choice or anti-gun Republicans? The point is not that the Republicans are all in lock step about every issue, it’s that they still form a coalition behind the chosen candidate and vote for that person. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/59 "2025-06-02T17:10:08Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > [Bob Altemeyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer), the Canadian-American [social psychologist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_psychologist) who first coined the term and its meaning in 1981, defined _right-wing authoritarian_ as someone who exhibits:[[4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism#cite_note-Altemeyer1996p6-4) Does he have other theories about the defecation practices of genus ursus? What about the religious denomination affiliation of the pontifex of Rome? The existence of these tendencies in all political constituencies, but particularly in the American voting populace, has always been clearly apparent. And yeah the fact Trump voters have these tendencies in spades is a “no sh\_t Sherlock” finding if ever there was one. IMO the shocking thing was that it always assumed that you couldn’t get elected on _just_ authoritarian tendencies (and racism) alone. There was always obviously a significant _minority_ of the American electorate who was going to enthusiastically support a fascist. It was just assumed that the fascist in question would have to do a good job of appealing to the rest of the voting populace, at least make decent stab at “drapping themselves in the flag and carrying a Bible”. Trump has failed to do anything except pay lip service to patriotism or religion, that would only convince people who had already drunk the right wing authoritarian koolaid. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933/60 "2025-06-02T18:22:56Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > IMO the shocking thing was that it always assumed that you couldn’t get elected on _just_ authoritarian tendencies (and racism) alone. There was always obviously a significant _minority_ of the American electorate who was going to enthusiastically support a fascist. > > It was just assumed that the fascist in question would have to do a good job of appealing to the rest of the voting populace, at least make decent stab at “drapping themselves in the flag and carrying a Bible”. Trump has failed to do anything except pay lip service to patriotism or religion, that would only convince people who had already drunk the right wing authoritarian koolaid. I agree. The US has always had a strong authoritarian undercurrent; but it was always presumed that anyone trying to take advantage of that would have to lean into the God-and-patriotism stereotypes and have a modicum of dignity and cunning. Trump doesn’t. Lots of people warned of the danger of fascism rising to power in the US, but the fascist they imagined was never a clown like Trump. Trump is just such a parody of awfulness that if he was a fictional character he’d be mocked as a ridiculous political strawman that in the _real_ world would never have any support from anyone. Yet in the _actual_ real world, he’s taken over the Republican party and made it into a personality cult. _Somehow._ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-you-cannot-understand-trumps-support-without-understanding-rwa-and-sdo/1017933.md?page=4)