Personality Types and Trump Support

 

A friend sent me a link to an article on the ZME Science website that I found both fascinating and disturbing. I checked out ZME to see what kind of reviews it gets. Turns out that ZME is based in Romania but publishes news on science in English. A media bias website considers it factual and reliable, albeit pro-science (which is good). This particular article, “This Study Finds a Chilling Link between Personality Type and Trump Support,” by Tudor Tarita, dated July 30, 2025, reports the results of a study led by University of North Texas psychologist Craig Neumann.

The article begins with this teaser: “In the years since Donald Trump emerged as the face of American conservatism, psychologists have grappled with a vexing question: why do so many Americans remain loyal to a morally questionable leader? Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, he had an affair with an adult star, and consistently misused donations, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg; yet, he maintains a cult-like loyal following.” Since the study, Trump has conducted a wholesale attack on the institutions of democracy, unleashed a cruel deportation crusade, and has offended most of our former allies, and that’s still the tip of the iceberg. And yet his support among the MAGA faithful remains strong, although his overall approval rating is tanking. So, what explains this fervent devotion among the MAGAts? (No, that’s not a misprint. And they really are feasting upon the rotting corpse of the Republican Party.)

Neumann’s study was published in July in the Journal of Research in Personality and suggests that at least “part of the answer may lie deep within the personalities of his supporters. . . . The study analyzed responses from over 9,000 U.S. adults in two large surveys conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed questionnaires that assessed their political beliefs, empathy levels, and personality traits. The results consistently showed a pattern: the more favorably someone rated Trump, the more likely they were to display traits like narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—traits grouped under what researchers call a malevolent disposition.” But the reverse was also true. “Participants who scored higher on benevolent traits like humanism, faith in humanity, and respect for others tended to oppose Trump and lean politically liberal.”

Interestingly, these results were consistent across gender and racial groups, as well as income, education, age, and minority status. There were some differences, though. “White men who scored higher on psychopathic traits also showed stronger support for Trump and conservative ideology. Among men of minority status, however, psychopathy did not predict political ideology. This variation, researchers propose, could stem from differing lived experiences with social power, privilege, and marginalization.” This makes sense, and I’ll extrapolate on later on what this may mean for Latter-day Saints.

“The study also looked at empathy, and the findings were disturbing once again. Trump supporters reported significantly lower levels of affective empathy (emotional concern for others) and higher levels of dissonant empathy (enjoyment of others’ pain). Interestingly, their ability to understand how others feel (cognitive empathy) remained intact. In other words, they know what others are feeling, they simply appear to care less, on average. They enjoy others’ pain more as well. This adds a chilling nuance to the political landscape. It’s not that supporters of Trump can’t understand suffering—it’s that they may find it unimportant, or even gratifying.”

Tarita points out that psychologists have long noticed a link between conservative ideology and authoritarianism, but this new study extends that link to more extreme traits like “callousness and lack of empathy.” Trump’s specific approach to politics, however, is not traditional conservatism. There is a cruelty in Trump, seen in such acts as mocking disabled reporters and separating children from their parents, that speaks of a wanton disregard for other people, a clear indication of psychopathic tendencies. “The fact that so many people view these actions positively,” says Tarita, “reflects something deeper than policy preference. It says that many people agree with such dark acts.”

But what about traits on the other end of the spectrum, benevolent traits? The study indicated that “these traits were strongly linked with liberal political beliefs and a rejection of Trump. . . . These individuals exhibited a distinct psychological orientation rooted in affiliation, care, and prosocial behavior. In contrast, Trump supporters showed the opposite pattern: higher scores on malevolent traits and lower on benevolent ones, shaping their political identity.”

Predictably, men were more likely to display malevolent traits and to more strongly support Trump. Women, on the other hand, were more benevolent and “showed weaker links between personality and politics.”

The authors of the study “are careful to stress that their findings reflect group averages, not individual labels. . . . Still, the patterns are meaningful.”

This brings me to my main question. What does this study say about LDS support for Trump? It would be interesting to conduct a similar survey among just Latter-day Saints. Support among Mormons for Trump has been weaker than for other Republican candidates, but, still, they voted overwhelmingly for the convicted felon over the career prosecutor in the 2024 election. I know many Latter-day Saints who support Trump, despite everything they know about him. I know ever more who held their noses and voted for Trump because they somehow imagine that things would be even worse under any Democratic president. (I’d love to see a study on how watching Fox News affects LDS political beliefs.) Most of these Trump-voting or Trump-supporting Latter-day Saints are not psychopaths. They are good Mormons, as far as I can tell. Of course, I don’t know what goes on in the hearts of my fellow Church members, but I know enough to believe that they would not reflect the results of this study.

My own suspicion is that many LDS voters have been brainwashed for so many years (thanks, ETB) into thinking that Democrats are evil, perhaps primarily because of one particular issue—abortion—that they cannot imagine themselves voting for a Democrat. My own parents, habitual Fox News viewers, probably fell into that camp. My mom died in 2013, though, so she never had a chance to vote for or against Trump (but she was very concerned about all of “Obama’s czars,” apparently something she had heard on Fox). Before my dad’s dementia set in (sometime after he broke his hip in 2020), he was a Republican but not a Trump fan (“I wish he’d just keep his mouth shut”). Still, I wonder how my dad voted in 2016. I never asked.

What I find most striking about this study is that Trump’s most ardent support group is Evangelical Christians. This study indicates that, by and large, most of these supporters have personality traits that are completely at odds with the traits Jesus both demonstrated and encouraged his followers to embrace. This is a damning sign that Christianity is failing its adherents at a very fundamental level. And Trump’s behavior in his second rodeo, after the surveys used in this study were all completed, is far more extreme than during his first term in office. So, his supporters are excusing much more egregious behavior and policies (if we can call them that) this time around. But the results of this study indicate that Trump’s supporters are not just gullible. They haven’t just been duped by Fox News and the endless disinformation streaming out of the Trump propaganda machine. Many of them actually embrace and enjoy the malevolence and cruelty that Trump has brought to the Republican Party.

How, I ask yet again, can any Latter-day Saint or any would-be Christian be a Republican in Trump’s America?