Transcription
I've been trying to figure out for years what makes people like me different from the people who support Trump. Why can people like me see so clearly what Trump is doing and yet 60 million Americans have fallen under his spell? So I decided to do some research on cults again and try to find out why certain people are immune to propaganda and the Trump cult. Right now about 65% of Americans reject Trump while the other 35% still follow him blindly. There's a scientific reason for that and it explains everything.
Here are the four psychological reasons certain people are immune to the Trump cult.
One, education and exposure. The largest group of people who are immune got there through education and exposure to people who are not like them. When you're educated, you learn how to evaluate evidence. You learn the scientific method. You learn how to spot logical fallacies. You learn from other experts how to solve problems using facts, science, and peer-reviewed studies. You learn that being wrong isn't a bad thing. You learn that if you don't study hard enough, you might get a bad grade every now and then. Being wrong is part of learning and problem solving. Being able to admit you are wrong is a strength, not a weakness. You also learn to appreciate people who are experts in their field of study because they were the ones who taught you how to actually solve problems.
But education alone isn't enough. You also need exposure to people who are different than you. Different races, different religions, different backgrounds. In 1954, psychologist Gordon Alport published a theory that became one of the most tested ideas in all of social science. He called it intergroup contact theory. People with real meaningful contact with people who are different than them. If you know people personally who are different than you, it's harder to dehumanize them. Because when you only know people who look and think like you, it's easy to believe everyone else is the enemy. But when you actually know people from different backgrounds, you can't dehumanize them. This has been confirmed by 515 studies across 38 countries involving 250,000 people.
Going to school to educate yourself just happens to be the best place to get exposure and make friends with people that are not like you. You learn to hold multiple perspectives at once. You learn that simple answers to complex problems are usually wrong. So when Trump shows up saying immigrants are the problem or I alone can fix it, you recognize these as lies instantly. In school, you work with these people in group projects, played sports with them, ate dinner with them. You started to realize they have the exact same problems you have and they worry about the same things you do. They may have physical, religious, and cultural differences, but you're all just people. You're all just trying to make it in the world. You're all just trying to survive. You see through these blatant lies and reject Trump outright.
Two, strong moral foundation from healthy families. These people are immune because they grew up in families that actually lived their values, not performative religion, actual compassion, empathy, and integrity. Their parents taught them to treat people with kindness and modeled that kind behavior back to them. Research on moral development shows that children raised with warmth and consistency develop a hardwire internal moral compass. These children were taught to consider other people's perspectives and develop moral reasoning built on care and fairness, not fear and compliance. They know cruelty is wrong. They know lying is wrong. They know humiliating people is wrong. So when Trump mocked a disabled reporter live on TV, when he calls people names, when he calls for violence at his rallies, these people were disgusted because it goes against everything they stand for. This group rejects Trump not because of his bad politics, but because he violates their core sense of right and wrong inside of them. Once you know what good looks like, you tend to reject bad when it comes along.
Three, being the scapegoat in an authoritarian household. The black sheep group of people are immune because they've seen abusive behavior before. If you grew up in a toxic household, you might have been the scapegoat. The black sheep was specifically targeted by the authoritarian parent. You were the one deemed by the authoritarian parent as always being wrong, always the one that was too sensitive, always the problem. The authoritarian parent taught the rest of the family one thing. It's okay to hurt the scapegoat if they don't comply, and submit to authority. Your refusal to fall in line exposed a lie that everyone had agreed to live by. the lie that that parent was always right and that made you dangerous. They tried to hurt you until you complied, but you never did. You couldn't trust your family because they lied and gaslit you, so you learn to question everything.
Researchers studying narcissistic family systems found something fascinating. The scapegoat is always the most empathetic and perceptive child in the family. They weren't picked randomly. They were targeted because their empathy, curiosity, and questioning of things threatened the authoritarian parents control. So they developed a strong resistance trait to protect themselves. Psychologists call this hypervigilance. Their brain is constantly scanning for threats and manipulation. When Trump showed up, you recognized him immediately. Not as a politician, as your abusive, authoritarian parent. The gaslighting, the cruelty, the demand for loyalty. It was your family all over again.
But your family didn't see Trump that way. The siblings who submitted learned that obedience meant safety. They've been looking for an authority figure to submit to ever since. They recognize Trump as power, not abuse. They enjoy watching others be forced to comply. For once, they're on the side doing the forcing. They need you to comply because if you resist and win, it means they were cowards. This is why they smile when protesters get beaten. It's the rush of being on the side that gets to hurt people instead of being hurt. The black sheep group knows how it feels and how wrong it is and they're not falling for it again. They've worked hard to get away from toxic family patterns. They see that immigrants have become the new scapegoat and they recognize the man running the show.
Four, professional experience with con artists. Some people are immune because they've dealt with con artists before. If you've built businesses, negotiated deals, or worked in sales, you've seen every manipulation tactic in the book. You know what it looks like when someone overpromises and underdelivers. When someone blames everyone else for their mistakes, when someone takes credit for other people's work. Researchers at the University of Twente studied thousands of people who encountered fraud and survived it. The number one strategy used by people who avoided being conned was simple. They recognized the pattern.
So when Trump showed up, claiming to be a brilliant businessman while bankrupting casinos, promising to make America great again while outsourcing his own products to China, saying he'd hire the best people while surrounding himself with losers, you saw through it immediately because you've dealt with scam artists before. They have professional experience spotting fake promises. And they're not falling for it again.
So if you're one of the 65% who reject Trump, you probably fall into one of these categories. You're not crazy. You learned how to learn. You learned how to evaluate evidence. You've had exposure to diverse groups of people in your life. And you recognize abusive patterns when you see them. His supporters don't see the abuse. They see his actions as an authoritarian parent whose power they can't wait to submit to. The difference is you've been taught to think critically and all they know how to do is obey.