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MAD TRUMPS’ HOGTIED Image Raises $26MIL For President BIDEN
How Normal is TRUMPS’ Sadism?-Perceived as Abnormally Sadistic & Narcissistic
TRUMP perceived as abnormally sadistic and narcissistic by both conservatives and liberals, study finds
MSRAW 15 MAR 2024
American voters view Donald Trump as having traits associated with sadistic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science.
The study found that even those who personally voted for Trump perceived him as having a highly disordered personality.
“The 2016 presidential election was widely described as one of the most polarizing elections in American history. My co-authors— Salwa Mansour, Shannon Matlock, Fred Coolidge— and I were interested in exploring how deeply this polarization extended,” explained study author Jacob A. Fiala, a psychometrist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Aging Center.
larifying this seemed to be an issue of key importance, as mental health experts were already beginning to conscientiously defy organizational restrictions and express their concerns that Trump’s personality traits could endanger the nation if he were to become president.”
In the study, 219 U.S. voters were randomly assigned to either view a 75 second compilation of videos that showed Trump in a positive light or a 75 second compilation of videos that showed Trump in a negative light. The participants then completed the Coolidge Axis II Inventory, which was used to assess their perceptions of Trump’s personality.
The questionnaire asked participants if they believed Trump held specific beliefs or was likely to engage in certain behaviors. “We did not just directly ask participants whether they thought Donald Trump was sadistic, narcissistic, or etc. Rather, participants were asked to complete a validated personality inventory, which asked them to rate how accurately numerous different statements like ‘He feels that he deserves special treatment from others’ described Donald Trump,” Fiala explained.
Unexpectedly, the positive and negative videos did not appear to influence the participants’ perceptions of Trump. This could be due to the fact that they were already well exposed to his personality. The researchers collected their data during the week after the 2016 election.
But the researchers did find that both conservatives and liberals perceived Trump as highly sadistic, narcissistic, antisocial, and passive-aggressive, though liberals tended to rate Trump’s personality as more dysfunctional in general compared to conservatives.
“We found that, on average, those who voted for Trump and those who voted for Clinton did not have wildly different views of Trump’s personality. Both groups saw him as particularly sadistic and narcissistic, and even though the two groups disagreed about how prominently he displayed these traits, his own supporters still judged him to be more sadistic and narcissistic than 90% of people,” Fiala told PsyPost.
“So, my key take-away is that American voters were not as divided on whether Donald Trump displays narcissistic traits, for example, as they were on what it means to have a leader with narcissistic traits. What can be expected of a leader with narcissistic traits?”
Fiala noted that the founding director of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior published a book in 2006 that outlined how narcissism was related to political behaviors.
“In our article, we briefly summarized some of the potentially harmful tendencies of narcissistic leaders, such as the following: defensively dismissing criticism and attacking critics, prioritizing the elevation of their public image over national well-being, refusing to admit they lack relevant knowledge instead of learning new information, making self-serving decisions instead of maintaining consistency with their stated beliefs, turning on anyone who stops singing their praises, and etc.,” Fiala explained.
“Frankly, it is hard for me to look at that list and believe it is a summary of a book chapter written in 2006 by the founder of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior rather than an editorialist’s recap of last week’s headlines.
I am left wondering whether Trump supporters would have been more concerned about the narcissistic traits they saw in him if they were aware that these traits tend to motivate these types of potentially disastrous behaviors, or whether they would be as accepting of such behavior if they understood it to be motivated by narcissistic traits.”
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