How do mass-psychology and narrative-identity theories explain the resilience of Trump’s political support?
Executive summary
Mass-psychology and narrative-identity theories explain Trump’s resilience by showing how emotional crowd dynamics, identity-protective cognition, and a shared, simplified life‑story combine to insulate followers from countervailing facts and bind them to a leader who functions as a living myth [1] [2] [3]. These frameworks stress not only individual cognitive biases but also social rituals, media ecosystems, and heterogeneous voter motivations that sustain loyalty across economic and demographic divides [4] [5] [6].
1. Mass psychology: the crowd, emotion, and the mythic leader
Mass-psychology emphasizes how leaders who evoke strong emotions and present themselves as extraordinary figures generate crowd cohesion and loyalty; scholars note that Trump’s celebrity status and performance style let him occupy a quasi-mythic role that normalizes rule‑breaking and concentrates group affect onto a single actor [1] [3]. Classic crowd dynamics literature, echoed in contemporary analyses, argues that emotionally charged publics become less interested in deliberative fact‑checking and more oriented toward belonging and action, a dynamic reinforced when followers see the leader as a protective figure against perceived threats [1] [3].
2. Narrative-identity: personal myths, narrative vacuums, and projection
Narrative-identity theory holds that adults make sense of their lives through coherent self-stories; researchers argue Trump presents a “narrative vacuum” that invites projection, so supporters map their own life‑stories—resentment, restoration, triumph—onto him rather than demanding a conventional autobiographical coherence [7] [3]. That projected authorship allows followers to treat Trump’s episodic, theatrical persona as a cipher for their own narratives of national decline and promised rebirth, making disconfirming evidence less disruptive because it threatens the follower’s personal myth rather than only a political preference [7] [3].
3. Cognitive mechanisms that lock belief in place
Psychological processes—confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, the illusory‑truth effect, and identity‑protective cognition—explain why repeated falsehoods and selective media exposure do not erode support; people selectively accept information that aligns with group narratives and dismiss corrections, and many supporters either view Trump as a trustworthy source or do not treat veracity as decisive for support [4] [2]. Identity fusion research further shows a reciprocal relationship between fused identity and belief in party narratives—those closely fused with Trump were more likely to adopt and maintain election‑fraud claims, which then insulated them from contradictory evidence [8].
4. Heterogeneous motivations: economics, status threat, and religion
Mass psychology and narrative identity must be layered over diverse voter motivations: economic anxiety and status concerns predict attraction to authoritarian, restorative messages in some groups, while religious identity threat explains durable support among others, such as white evangelicals who interpret Trump’s success as providential [9] [6] [10]. Large survey and typology work shows multiple Trump constituencies—American Preservationists, Staunch Conservatives, Anti‑Elites—each bring different mixes of policy preference and identity needs that make one‑size psychological explanations incomplete [5].
5. Ecosystem and incentives: media, repetition, and political entrepreneurship
The media ecosystem—echo chambers, partisan outlets, and social amplification—operates as the distribution mechanism of mass‑psychology and narrative identity, converting spectacle into durable social reality through repetition and selective framing [4] [2]. Scholars warn that researchers and political actors alike have incentives to cultivate narratives that mobilize emotion and identity; reporting and commentary must therefore be read as interventions with their own agendas, not neutral mirrors of psychological truth [1] [3].
6. Limits, alternatives, and what the evidence does not settle
Existing studies establish mechanisms and correlations—identity fusion, narrative projection, motivated cognition, economic and religious drivers—but many samples are nonrepresentative and causal chains remain contested; competing explanations stress structural conditions, elite cues, or conventional rational calculation, and scholars caution against reducing complex electoral behavior to single psychological models [8] [11] [2]. The sources provided sketch a robust, multi‑layered account but cannot definitively quantify the relative weight of each mechanism across all Trump supporters [8] [5].