What accounts for the intense devotion of Donald Trump’s supporters? Pettigrew (2017) has cautioned against single factor explanations. Using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we tested a theory of attachment to strongly-held belief systems that integrates multiple influential variables, such as partisanship (e.g., Jacobson 2017), racism (e.g., Schaffner et al. 2018), and authoritarianism (e.g., Ludeke et al. 2018) within a narrative structure that includes 5 belief components and related emotions: The evaluative component (describing alternative outcomes differing in desirability) was measured by 4 items assessing outcomes of the 2016 election as described by Trump: opposing abortion, gun control, gay rights, and (what he asserted was) a deteriorating economy (α=.63); The behavioral component (encompassing actions said to determine which outcomes will occur) by 3 items: deporting illegal immigrants, repealing the ACA, and opposing EPA regulation (α=.63); The identificational component (specifying supporters and opponents who take the actions and experience the outcomes) by a 3-item Identification-With-Trump index, comprising Republican partisanship, conservative ideology, and the perception Trump cares about people like you (α=.78); and a 7-item Identification-Against-Blacks index, comprising items on racism and racial resentment (α=.79); The normative component (beliefs relevant to morality) by the 4-item ANES authoritarianism scale (α=.64); The explanatory component (arguments and evidence showing the belief system is true) by an item asking how qualified Trump was to be president.
