By Laura Townsend
In the months since the election, I have been surprised to see how many supporters President Trump has kept. When he was running, Trump voters — however misguided — felt they had good reason to cast their ballots. They heard Trump’s promises regarding the matters they took most to heart and hoped to see him follow through. His promises were more important to many of them than the policies they disagreed with.
It is now March, and Trump has proven that he is a breaker of promises. The people who believed Trump would follow through are facing a cold reality. And yet, many of these people are still standing up for him, still rooting for him, still placing him in high regard. His continual support, in spite of his inability to follow through on pre-election promises, is more surprising to me than the support he gained prior to the election.
Trump is an authoritarian leader. Many of his fans are those who value order over change, authority over independence. To understand how his authoritarian leadership style has influenced his continued support, one might look at the Milgram Experiment.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that tested the willingness of a person to obey an authority figure, even if it meant invoking pain on another human being.
The participants were given shock generators that they believed to be wired to a person in the next room. The participants were told that pressing the button would send a painful electrical shock to those people. In reality, no shocks were being administered, but the participants were led to believe that the shocks were absolutely real.
The participants asked a series of questions of the person, and for every question the person answered incorrectly, the participants were told to send a shock wave. The participants believed that the voltage increased by 15-volt increments each time the button was pressed.
The person in the other room was told to react to the “shocks,” screaming, wailing, and banging the walls to show the participants just how much pain they were invoking. The authority member leading the experiment purposefully made the participants feel pressured to keep going in spite of this, encouraging them to ignore their conscience and their morals.
The results showed that the majority of participants stayed through the entire experiment and continued to administer shocks the whole time.
This experiment was repeated in Poland in 2015, and found that 90 percent of participants were willing to continue administering electric shocks.
The experiment appeared to show that most people are willing to abandon their morals for the sake of an authority member. As for Trump, it may be that his supporters feel pressured to stand by him, allowing them to turn a blind eye to the promises he fails to keep. As long as his supporters feel pressured to obey his authority, they will likely continue to do so throughout his presidency.