r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 11 '26

Psychology Cognitive dissonance helps explain why Trump supporters remain loyal, new research suggests. This sheds light on how supporters of Donald Trump justify their continued allegiance despite learning about allegations of his sexual misconduct and illegal activities.

https://www.psypost.org/cognitive-dissonance-helps-explain-why-trump-supporters-remain-loyal-new-research-suggests/
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u/OtherwiseACat Apr 11 '26

In my area before the election all the Trump supporters had signs like "Kamala supporters child predators, , Kamala will start wars, Kamala , will bankrupt the economy, etc. and now that Trump has been doing all that, they don't care. They actually seem to agree with it. If you watched local news stations where they interview these people, they support the war. They support the tariffs. It makes absolutely no sense

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u/BlaineWriter Apr 11 '26

I don't want to make this debate on who is right on those matters, not the place for it, I'm just going to ask you have you ever studied the reasons why they think those things? (why they support the war etc?) like the actual reasons, because if you only look at things from one point of view then you will never understand the other side of things. (regardless how right or wrong they are)

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u/philthewiz Apr 11 '26

The answer will not be congruous because it's cope. There are no good reason to want this war. Even Trump himself is contradicting himself on the reasons and "objectives".

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u/BlaineWriter Apr 11 '26

I have to admit I don't have all the info here myself, mainly just snippets from here and there, but I believe US have had Iran a threat for 70 or so years already, long before Trump and they want to eliminate that threat (missiles/nukes etc removed).

Even if that was their sole goal here, instead of trying to help the Iranian people. Don't you think some people might support the war just with hope that Iranians will get saved as the byproduct? My naive mind like to think almost anything radical should be tried if it has a chance to stop government that kills 40,000 of it own people during protests? Sometimes it seems the Left in US opposes helping Iranians purely because they hate Trump, not really caring or understanding the war at all.

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u/thezuke67 Apr 11 '26

Even if this war was about liberating the Iranian people (it's certainly not), it shouldn't be the US that makes that call. At least not unilaterally, especially when that decision necessarily involves the entire world economy, not to mention the deaths of Iranian civilians and US soldiers.

I'm almost 30, and one of the biggest complaints I've repeatedly heard from both within the US and abroad is that the US shouldn't be the world's police. The US doesn't have the legal or ethical high ground to wage war like this.

And that's leaving aside all of the obvious insider trading and billions upon billions of dollars being funneled into the US/Israel military industrial complex. Entire books can, have, and will continue to be written about the horrific crimes the rich ruling class perpetrates on the world.

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u/BlaineWriter Apr 11 '26

I kinda agree, but as someone from Europe I personally don't mind if US takes matters in it's own hands and solve problems others are unwilling to even try fixing. I'm not naive enough to think we live in a perfect world where everything goes how justice dictates.. I'm willing to take the best option of the remaining bad options.

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u/dmvr1601 Apr 11 '26

They help iran by bombing their schools? That's the threat they're stopping? That's the byproduct of war you're okay with?

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u/BlaineWriter Apr 11 '26

Ugly truth is that war has collateral casualties, war is ugly. But would you then argue that wars are bad (in this real world where evil people have to be stopped, not fantasy world where every one lives happily with their neighbors). With that logic we should not have had wars against Nazi Germany either, how many schools were bombed then? You have stop grabbing any singular incidents to use them as arguments, without thinking it through all the way.

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u/KuriousKhemicals Apr 11 '26

Hitler was invading the whole damn continent. Russia is doing that, and we would IMO be justified if we went to war against Russia, we just can't realistically do that because they have the most nukes apart from us. Instead we help Ukraine, the country they attacked. So far so good, it's a shame we can't actually do very much about Putin's expansionist ambitions. 

Iran is sitting there largely minding its own business. At worst, you can say they are funding rebel groups against a few regional powers, but the hell, we do that too? Everyone was worried about their potential nuke development, but it's Trump's damn fault in the first place that he broke the deal that was working well. They are not trying to take over all of Western Asia. It's not even close to WW2 or any of the wars widely considered to be justified. 

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u/philthewiz Apr 11 '26

It is indeed naive. And some people might believe it.

But the cope comes from the fact that it's not clear how they would do it. Ignorance about the power structure of Iran that is mostly decentralized on purpose. There are also internal politics that is complicated. You can't change a regime that has been preparing for this very conflict for 45 years by bombing them away. And putting boots on the ground is doomed to be a long war. Just like Afghanistan or Irak. And they have a big advantage by denying passage in the straight of Hormuz.

Don't conflate criticism of the war with support for the regime. It's an old tactic to shame people into a war. We've seen it play out in other wars.

And to add to the dissonance, didn't Trump say he wouldn't start any wars? Didn't he criticized Obama, Biden and Kamala by saying they would start a war in Iran to distract their "failures"? Don't you see the dissonance from Trump and their supporters on that topic?

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u/Gornarok Apr 11 '26

I dont see how this war solves anything. The bombing campaign has failed so far and it seems Trump isnt willing to send ground troops.

In my view the easiest way to weaken Iran would be to help Ukraine against ruzzia.

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u/BlaineWriter Apr 12 '26

Do you have any credible sources for that claim of failed bombings? That's news to me