The Denier in Chief: Faith in Trump and Techniques of Neutralization in a Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Based on a March 28–29, 2020 MTurk survey (N = 1,000), the current study examined how faith in President Donald Trump’s statements downplaying the risks and his responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic affected endorsement of social distancing techniques of neutralization. Controlling for a host of variables, the analysis revealed that faith in Trump’s denials was robustly associated with neutralization beliefs. Support for techniques of neutralization also was affected by, among other variables, low self-control and binding foundations, a construct drawn from Haidt’s Moral Foundation Theory. These results suggest that in the early stages of the pandemic, President Trump’s denials served as a likely source of cognitions justifying noncompliance with social distancing health norms. More generally, the data indicate that in his assumed role of the “Denier in Chief,” Trump may have been influential in prompting faithful followers to engage in conduct (e.g., be maskless, associate indoors) that exposed them to coronavirus infection as the pandemic unfolded throughout 2020.

Notes

¹ For the sake of parsimony, we refer to Donald Trump as “President Trump” as opposed to the “former” or “ex” President.

² As a reviewer noted, Trump’s statement regarding the “China Virus” could be interpreted as asking for a judgment – whether Trump in fact made this claim – and not for an opinion on whether they personally believed the statement was true. Given the context of the survey, we believe that most subjects would have responded on the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with Trump’s claim was accurate (as was asked in the other items). Some credence to this view is that this item loaded on the same factor as the other items in the faith in Trump’s denials scale. Still, to ensure that this item did not affect the results, the analytical models were reestimated with the “China Virus” item deleted. The results were virtually the same. For example, in Model 2 in Table 3, the regression coefficient for faith in Trump denials was statistically significant at the p<.001 level in both cases. The Β increased slightly from .362 to .400 with the item deleted. All analyses in Table 4 were also reestimated with the item deleted. Again, the effect of faith in Trump’s denials remained substantively unchanged.

³ As a check, we conducted a factor analysis of the items measuring faith in Trump’s denials and techniques of neutralization. These items load on separate factors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francis T. Cullen

Francis T. Cullen is distinguished research professor emeritus and a senior research associate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He is a past president of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He is a coauthor of Confronting School Violence: A Synthesis of Six Decades of Research (Cambridge University Press). His current interests include developing the rehabilitation redemption model of corrections, social support theory, racial attitudes and public policy, and the criminology of Donald Trump.

Amanda Graham

Amanda Graham is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia Southern University. She received her Ph.D. in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati. She co-editor of Crime and Victimization in the Trump Era (Taylor & Francis). Her current research interests focus on the fear of police brutality, perceptions of and reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial sources of crime-related public opinion, and “criminometics”—the measurement of core criminological concepts. 

Cheryl Lero Jonson

Cheryl Lero Jonson is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Xavier University in Cincinnati. She is coauthor of Correctional Theory: Context and Consequences and of Deterrence, Choice, and Crime: Contemporary Perspectives. Her current research interests focus on the impact of prison on recidivism, public opinion and criminal justice policy, civilian active assailant responses, and the public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Justin T. Pickett

Justin T. Pickett is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the 2015 recipient of the American Society of Criminology’s Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award. His research interests include survey research methods, public opinion, police-community relations, and theories of punishment. 

Melissa M. Sloan

Melissa M. Sloan is an associate professor of sociology and interdisciplinary social sciences at the University of South Florida. She is co-editor of Theories of Terrorism: Contemporary Perspectives, a volume in the Advances in Criminological Theory series (Routledge). Her recent research concerns the social shaping of emotion, with an emphasis on public fear concerning the threat of terrorism and associated policy preferences.

Murat Haner

Murat Haner is a lecturer in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida. He is the author of The Freedom Fighter: A Terrorist’s Own Story and co-editor of Theories of Terrorism: Contemporary Perspectives. His research focuses on the radicalization process that leads to the onset, persistence, and desistance from political violence.  His work also examines public reactions to terrorism and policy preferences for preventing different types of criminal victimization.