Does Psychology Explain Why Some Voters Continue to Back Bush?
We are faced with an intriguing mystery: President George W. Bush’s administration has been pursuing a disastrous intervention in Iraq, yet some Americans remain generally supportive of the president. This allegiance to a failed policy gives a substantial number of Republican Congressmen the will to resist Democratic appeals for a withdrawal from Iraq.
Why do many people stay strongly behind Bush despite an abundance of news stories suggesting that the mission in Iraq is deeply flawed? Can ideas from psychology help to solve the “mystery”?
A recent CBS Poll demonstrated the strength of support in the Republican camp. During the week of August 8-12 pollsters asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?” 62% of Republicans approved. Only 7% of Democrats, 21% of Independents, and 26% of all adult respondents registered agreement with the president’s handling of matters. Clearly, 62% of Republicans project a very different opinion about President Bush’s policy in Iraq.
Most Americans who are not among the president’s loyal backers (including some Republicans) recognize the futility of the war. They understand that Iraqi society is fragmenting and slipping quickly towards civil war. Shia militias are fighting each other. Sunni and Shia warriors are in murderous conflict and slaughtering innocent bystanders as well. Leaders of the various factions in Iraqi politics have not been able to create a viable government. The “surge” has brought some security in Al Anbar Province and in sections of Baghdad, but most of the country is in chaos. More than a million Iraqis are in other nations as refugees. In the meantime U.S. soldiers are stuck in a quagmire. Their deaths are approaching the 4,000 mark, thousands more are seriously injured, and America’s military engagement ultimately will cost well over a trillion dollars, according to current estimates.
We hear many explanations for the resistance to a change in course, but commentators on the tenacity of Republican support for George W. Bush rarely seek insights from psychology. They usually focus on political machinations in the White House, observing the way Karl Rove and other spin doctors attempted to make the President’s actions look appealing, especially to those in his party’s base. Attention to psychology re-directs this analysis. Rather than focusing on the ideas and behavior of leaders, it examines the ideas and behavior of followers.
Three important themes in the psychological research of the last half century are particularly relevant when probing the attitudes of Bush’s loyal supporters: The Authoritarian Personality, Locus of Control, and Terror Management Theory. These fields of investigation do not provide sure-fire scientific explanations for political behavior, but they can suggest new ways to think about the tendency of some citizens to avoid questioning the president’s actions. The research identifies outlooks that lead to conformity and deference.
Theodor Adorno and his associates published articles and a controversial book on “The Authoritarian Personality” in the 1950s. Using a questionnaire, Adorno and his team attempted to identify people with reactionary, anti-democratic leanings. Adorno and his associates had their minds on World War II, the Holocaust, and fascism, but some of the statements they presented to subjects touched attitudes that are relevant to current politics. For instance, researchers asked subjects to judge the following: “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” Agreement with that statement today may suggest an authoritarian disposition, an outlook that supports allegiance to prominent figures, including the president.
The concept of an “Authoritarian Personality” came under sharp assault in the mid-1950s. Critics attacked it on two grounds. They noted that Adorno and his colleagues were eager to attribute unflattering personality characteristics to people on the political right but said almost nothing about the authoritarian perspectives of radical leftists. Critics also claimed Adorno’s methodology was corrupted, for the coding of responses had often been highly subjective.
Recently prominent figures have acknowledged flaws in the original research, but they claimed that Adorno and his associates were, nevertheless, on to something important. Research by Bob Altemeyer, a social psychologist, confirmed that authoritarianism was consistently associated with right-wing rather than left-wing ideology. Alan Wolfe, a sociologist and frequent commentator on political affairs in the national media, claimed Adorno and his team members were quite “prescient,” because similar outlooks turned up in the 1960s and later in the thinking of Americans who joined the John Birch Society and became opponents of the UN and fluoridation. Wolfe pointed also to more recent examples of an authoritarian disposition among ultra-conservatives in the United States. John Dean, a key Nixon aide in the Watergate scandal who later became a loud critic of George W. Bush’s administration, agreed. He said, “There is no doubt in my mind, based on years of personal observation, that contemporary conservative thinking is rife with authoritarian behavior, a conclusion that has been confirmed by social science.” George Lakoff, a linguist at Berkeley who has been an influential adviser to Democratic candidates, takes a related position but does not build his case on Adorno’s work. Lakoff reports that conservatives tend to project an authoritarian worldview that he calls a “Strict Father model.”
When interpreting the allegiance of many Americans to the president and his policies, useful insights may also come from a concept known as “Locus of Control.” Julian Rotter led this field of research in the 1950s and 1960s, and many other investigators substantiated and expanded that work in later years. Locus of Control involves the study of one’s sense of agency or self-control. People identified as “internals” tend to think that they can influence their own destiny. “Externals,” by contrast, often think life is controlled by fate, luck or external circumstances. Externals are easily influenced by the opinion of others.
Several statements on Rotter’s scale relate directly to the opinions of Bush’s enthusiastic supporters, especially the judgments associated with foreign policy and war. Members of the Republican base may agree strongly with the following sentences on Rotter’s list:
* “There will always be wars, no matter how hard people try to prevent them.”
* “This world is run by the few people in power, and there is not much that the little guy can do about it.”
* “I have found often that what is going to happen will happen.”
Agreement with each of these statements suggests the outlook of “externals,” people who are less inclined to take matters into their own hands. Bush’s loyal supporters may have a sense that the president is in the best position to direct the nation’s affairs; common citizens are stepping out of line when they try to challenge his policies and leadership. Indeed, the fundamental nature of some partisans’ allegiance to Bush and his war policies may relate generally to a disposition toward conformity and deference.
A third area of relevant psychological research carries the name, Terror Management Theory. Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski pioneered investigations of the way people cope with the frightening realization that they are destined to die. The researchers’ experiments showed this fear can trigger a variety of emotions, including disdain for other cultures and religions and enthusiasm for a charismatic leader. Some of their work explored President Bush’s popularity after the tragedy of September 11. They traced his esteem, in part, to people’s preference for a charismatic figure during a death-related crisis. Bush’s appeal was connected to “his image as a protective shield against death, armed with high-tech weaponry, patriotic rhetoric, and the resolute invocation of doing God’s will to rid the world of evil.” In the years since September 11, the president’s popularity has sagged, but it remains strong with the 62% of Republicans who approved of his war policies. These individuals could be influenced to some degree by the “mortality salience” that students of Terror Management Theory identify.
All of this is speculation, of course. We do not know precisely how the keen supporters of U.S. war actions in Iraq would respond to questions presented by psychologists involved in the study of authoritarianism, locus of control, or terror management theory. Dependence on psychological research also has its problems. An element of condescension may creep into the social scientists’ work, for psychologists may assume too readily that their “subjects” are naïve and emotion-driven. Also, psychological research can be directed at individuals with different political perspectives. Defenders of the president and his policies may legitimately ask how critics of the war score on the personality assessments.
Still, the burgeoning field of political psychology offers rich possibilities for historians, journalists, and public officials who are seeking new ways to understand political behavior. When trying to appreciate why many Americans are guided by emotional reactions when making political choices, investigators can discover useful insights in books such as Drew Westen’s The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation and in various articles published in the journal, Political Psychology.
Perhaps psychologists can throw light on vexing questions about the congressional paralysis that keeps U.S. forces bogged down in Iraq. Republicans in Congress are unwilling to abandon the president’s Iraq policies as long as a substantial portion of their “base” remains firmly in Bush’s camp. Why, then, do some Americans tenaciously hold onto opinions that clash sharply with the facts emerging from Iraq? Why do they remain supportive of the president in the face of abundant information revealing his serious shortcomings in the conduct of foreign policy? To what degree does their political loyalty spring from agreement with the president’s foreign policy? To what degree is that fidelity affected by an inclination toward conformity, deference, and obedience to authority?