During the year-long saga of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign, it has become quite well known his supporters are viewed as those who harbor deep-seated racial prejudices. Now a recent study has been published which has a shocking revelation – that Trump’s supporters are indeed fueled by bigotry, but this time proved by quantifiable data and not just the opinions of those on the internet.
The Washington Post conducted their experiment on Trump supporters by piggybacking on a survey conducted by the University of Minnesota‘s “Center for the Study of Political Psychology.” In essence, they took two pictures of innocuous looking males, one white and one black, standing in front of a foreclosure sign. The pictures were identical except for the race of the individual.
After looking at the image 746 of Trump’s supporters were asked to answer questions about their impressions of granting mortgage assistance. All of the Trump supporters were white. This wasn’t due to a racial prejudice on the study’s behalf, it was due to there being nearly zero non-white supporters of Trump.
There were a handful of non-whites, but the amount was so few they could not be used in the study. The photographs were not mentioned during the questioning, nor was attention drawn to them at any point. The photographs were merely used to prime the Trump supporter’s biases.
When individuals who did not support Trump were asked if they supported mortgage assistance, 28% who saw the image of the white man by the sign opposed mortgage assistance compared to only 22% who saw the image of a black man standing by the same sign. Trump’s supporters showed completely opposite results, with 51% being against mortgage assistance when seeing the white individual, and 59% being against mortgage assistance who saw a black person standing by the sign.
Not convinced? There’s more.
When asked if they were “somewhat angry” about mortgage assistance, the exact same scenario played out. 26% of Non-Trump supporters claimed to be “somewhat angry” when shown the image of the white man by the sign, as opposed to only 17% when shown the same mortgage sign with a black man in the image. Conversely, 40% of Trump supporters who were shown the image of a white man described themselves as “somewhat angry”, while 50% of Trump supporters who saw the image of a black man were “somewhat angry.”
The real kicker came when respondents were asked if the individuals who might qualify for mortgage assistance were more than “somewhat to blame” for their financial predicament. Keep in mind none of the individuals included in the study were given any information at all about the hypothetical financial status of any person seeking mortgage assistance. They allowed their own biases to determine that for them, and for three out of three times Trump’s supporters were automatically more against the black man in the sign.
The evidence shows 48% of non-Trump supporters who saw the image of a white man say those seeking assistance were more than “somewhat to blame”, but only 37% said the same when they saw the image of a black man. Trump supporters, staying true to their stereotype were again the complete opposite. When asked if individuals seeking mortgage assistance from the government were more than “somewhat to blame” for their financial situation, 59% who saw the white image agreed, as opposed to 66% against the Trump supporters who saw the image of a black man.
None of these findings were a mere fluke or twisted in any way. According to the study’s authors:
It’s worth noting that all these findings hold up in more sophisticated analyses. When we control for age, income, sex, education, party identification, ideology, whether the respondent was unemployed, and perceptions of the national economy — other factors that might shape attitudes about mortgage relief — our results were the same.
As Trump’s campaign has been built upon hatred, fear, and division this evidence may not be news to some, but it does present reproducible evidence of the persistent biases in Trump’s supporters. Try as they might, Trump’s base will shrug their shoulders and claim the media has skewed the facts to present them in a less-than-flattering light. The evidence proves that it is not the media but Trump’s base who have made themselves appear this way all on their own.
What do you think?
