Tag: Donald Trump

Trump Critiques Football in the Name of Politics

     This week politics has crossed over from the white house to the sports field. Politics have started to infiltrate sports: especially football. The Washington Post wrote an article about how recently, several football teams have taken a knee during the national anthem. The president has told the American people that it was disrespectful to do such a thing despite the amendment right to do so. In the article he says, “That’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for. Okay? And I know we have freedoms, and we have freedom of choice and many, many different freedoms, but you know what? It’s still totally disrespectful.” The Washington Post then talks about how football has increasingly become more and more diverse and that athletes feel as though Trump is silencing their rights as well as taking them away. Should athletes have the right to voice political views? Should people perform outside of their designated roles in america?

     Trump often ridicules athletes for performing outside of their roles. Often times when people step outside their roles they are chastised or shown repercussions. Roles are a set of standards that outline how people should behave in a social position. Let’s first define the role of a football player. Football players play football, recieve interviews, have practices and most importantly avoid politics. The other role that a football player has is being an american citizen. American citizens have pride in their country and often show that pride by standing during the pledge of allegiance. That’s a norm that anyone who is an american citizen follows. Trump criticizes players when they perform outside their roles but is it possible that Trump is performing outside his presidential role by chastising them?  As a president he should worry more about the states of the United States as suppose to sports. The president fails to recognize that as people we have other roles to fill such as mother, father, brother and so forth. The reason the football players kneel is because they recognize their families and friends are in danger especially if they are a person of color. They also are not given the same rights they should be given as an american citizen.  

     In the same light, many people judge these football players based on assumptions and their own inner biases. Trump views these football players as disrespectful when they kneel instead of stand during the national anthem. This can be somewhat explained by the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error can be defined as the propensity to explain someone’s behavior by attributing a cause to his/her behavior. We either attribute it to dispositional aspects or situational aspects. The negative behavior according to Trump is the football players kneeling during the national anthem. The dispositional attribution is that they are being disrespectful to this country. This makes Trump and other americans believe that they are being disrespectful and that they behavior is linked to their personality. The football players view their behavior differently by looking at the situation attributions: racial tension is building, they have been treated unfairly or racially in america, and that they haven’t been given the same opportunities and rights as the typical white American. The football players believe that they are exercising their rights as americans.

NFL team owners blast Trump in solidarity with players’ protests

President Donald Trump continued his Twitter war with the National Football League on Saturday, this time taking aim at Commissioner Roger Goodell for permitting players to protest by kneeling during the national anthem.

 

Li, D. K. (2017). NFL team owners blast Trump in solidarity with players’ protests. Retrieved from https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/170925-nfl-protest-trump-feature.jpg?quality=90&strip=all

Scott, E. (2017). Analysis | Trump’s problem isn’t with athletes being political. It’s with athletes speaking out against racism.. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/25/trumps-problem-isnt-with-athletes-being-political-its-with-athletes-speaking-out-against-racism/?utm_term=.62a9684afd8b [Accessed 27 Sep. 2017].

Zilber, A. (2017). President Donald Trump continued his Twitter war with the National Football League on Saturday, this time taking aim at Commissioner Roger Goodell for permitting players to protest by kneeling during the national anthem. Retreived from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4914090/Bruce-Maxwell-baseball-player-knee.html#ixzz4ttGFV8mY Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook. Retrieved from http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/09/24/04/44A52F0200000578-4914090-President_Donald_Trump_continued_his_Twitter_war_with_the_Nation-a-6_1506225216291.jpg

Kendra L.

“Mother of All Bombs”

On April 11th 2017 the U.S Military dropped a 21,700-pound bomb on Isis positions in Afghanistan killing 36 Isis militant’s. This comes just a few months after Donald Trump was elected 45th President of the United States. This has brought up questions about how our military is going to change within the next four years. 1) The Military’s budget is about to increase upwards to $54 Billion dollars due to threats from a “Dangerous World”.

 

Our military is the strongest in the world. We are a powerhouse nation who is respected throughout the world but we are not the largest. I believe we are doing this because President Trump wants to come into office and make a statement basically saying that we aren’t just going to roll over if an injustice takes place in this world. He is believed to suffer from narcissism, which could explain why his persona is so dominating. Narcissistic people care about making themselves as powerful as possible. They like to be at the top of whatever they are doing and be the best at it. Having a president like this in my opinion is not necessarily a bad thing. If you are going to lead our country you should be able to be at your peak confidence level. But many people are arguing with this because he is also a wealthy businessman who can benefit himself from being president. It’s been a hot topic ever since he declared he was going to run. 2) Regarding the military though, being narcissistic has been proven to be a good thing. Most higher end military leaders are narcissistic because you expect greatness and wont settle for less. I hope to enlist after college so I’m very excited to see where this money goes and what President Trump plans on doing.

 

 

Brendan Maloney

Swipe Right (For Republican)

 

By Connor Wills

While we watch policy and government morph and change with the recent inauguration of President Trump, most people are continuing on with their day to day lives. They’re buying groceries, going to school and work- and they’re even dating! But what does dating have to do with Donald Trump? Does politics play a role in relationships? According to NPR, it sure does. When talking to individuals, they found that a person’s political party will either immediately connect or disconnect individuals looking for a romantic relationship. Why? Likely it has something to do with confirmation bias.

According to a study published by the Polish Psychological Bulletin, people exhibit a confirmation bias when faced with making judgements based on moral character and intelligence/competence. The study’s results showed that people were more likely to search for reasons to support their judgements based on character than they were to search for support of intelligence. They exhibited more bias when it came to moral situations and moral traits- such as honesty- than when it came to competence- such as logical reasoning. And- get this- it made no difference whether one was aware of their bias or not, they still expressed the same amount of bias towards the individual. So, people are likely to act biased towards people based on perceptions of moral character- and they will actively search for reasons to back up their claim.

So, wait- how does this connect to dating? Shared morals and values are one of the things that allow relationships to work. And so, these values are often included on online dating profiles. If I were to mention Hillary Clinton, what kind of ideas would pop into your mind? Likely her morals and values expressed during her campaign. What if I mentioned Donald Trump? The same, right? People are including their political stances on their dating profiles, which puts a perception of character in an individual’s mind. So, when people are browsing through, say, Tinder, and open someone’s profile to see that they have a political affiliation listed, an individual will immediately start looking for validation to support the perception that comes along with it. This confirmation bias is pushing Democrats and Republicans even farther apart, as it is only enforcing the perceived moral differences between the groups. Will Republicans and Democrats be able to get over their differences any time soon? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Citations:

Brycz, H., Wyszomirska-Góra, M., Bar-Tal, Y., & Wiśniewski, P. (2014). The effect of metacognitive self on confirmation bias revealed in relation to community and competence. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 45(3). doi:10.2478/ppb-2014-0037

 

Myers, D. G. (2012). Exploring social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

 

Smith, T. (2017, February 14). When Dating In The Era Of Divisive Politics, Both Sides Stick To Themselves. Retrieved February 15, 2017, from http://www.npr.org/2017/02/14/515179534/when-dating-in-the-era-of-divisive-politics-both-sides-stick-to-themselves

A False Sense of Reality

By: Christina Stewart

Just a day after Trump’s inauguration on January 20th, 2017, him and his administration stunned the public with false assertions about how many people attended the ceremony.

In an article from NBC News titled “Some Experts Say Trump Team’s Falsehoods Are Classic ‘Gaslighting’,” by Maggie Fox, she and two psychologists explain the impact of these false assertions. Trump and White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, came under fire after claiming that the media misrepresented the crowd size of the inauguration. According to Trump, more people were in attendance than had been reported on and depicted in photos (Fox, 2017). Spicer furthered this comment saying that the inauguration had the largest audience in history (Fox, 2017). Not surprisingly, news agencies were quick to dispute the claims. The general public’s psychological health was undoubtedly affected by these statements as they felt manipulated and dumbed-down.

According to clinical psychologist Bryant Welch and Robert Feldman, the systemic lying from Trump’s camp is a sign of “gaslighting”: a term used to describe when one manipulates and confuses another making them question reality. Confusing people makes them vulnerable —  making it easier to gain power over them whether or not they believe what they’re being told (Fox, 2017). The deliberate nature of these false allegations showed arrogance and disrespect for the American audience.

Reading about this event reminded me of the cognitive dissonance theory. When the American public heard the statements disputing the crowd sizes, this resulted in cognitive dissonance: a feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from having two inconsistent thoughts or beliefs at the same time (Myers, 2012, pp. 97-98). The general public recognized that the crowd size was significantly smaller despite what Trump’s administration claimed. With these two viewpoints clashing, the public was left in a state of disarray. This dissonance not only induced shock, but also mentally affected the public − so much so that it affected their memories.

The public’s reaction was expected and can be explained by findings from a cognitive dissonance study conducted by Dario Rodriguez and Deryn Strange. Authors of the article “False Memories for Dissonance Inducing Events,” Rodriguez and Strange tested just how common it is for people to alter and distort their past to support their self-concepts. They sought to test the hypothesis of whether or not cognitive dissonance causes people to misrepresent their memories and attitudes.

In the experiment, around one hundred undergraduates were told to write an essay where they were either allowed to choose their stance, or were told which stance to take regarding a tuition increase (Rodriguez and Strange, 2014). Before and after the experiment, participants had to complete an online questionnaire asking for their true opinions on several school-related issues. On the questionnaire following the experiment, participants were instructed to think back to the initial online survey, and answer the items as they did at that time (Rodriguez and Strange, 2014). The hope was that attitudes would change after the experiment had ended.

Those who chose their stance exhibited the predicted attitude-shift, and were more likely to misremember their initial attitudes than those whose stances were dictated. Overall, the results provide that cognitive dissonance may cause memory distortion. In terms of the American public, those who recognized the real crowd size were more likely to distort and question this initial belief than those who did not. In other words, those who had agreed with Trump’s statements were less likely to feel any kind of dissonance. Therefore, being told to believe in a false crowd size challenged the public’s memory. People’s memories had to be re-adjusted to fit their self-perceptions after being told the crowd was larger than it was.

It’s fascinating to see how Trump’s behavior is reinforced by psychological data. His willingness to distort the truth is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance, as is his willingness to distort reality.

 

Works Cited

AP. (2017, January 25). Some Experts Say Trump Team’s Falsehoods Are Classic ‘Gaslighting’ [Digital image]. Retrieved February 15, 2017, from This pair of photos shows a view of the crowd on the National Mall at the inaugurations of President Barack Obama, above, on Jan. 20, 2009, and President Donald Trump, below, on Jan. 20, 2017. The photo above and the screengrab from video below were both shot shortly before noon from the top of the Washington Monument.

Fox, M. (2017, January 25). Tall tales about Trump’s crowd size are “gaslighting”, some experts say. Retrieved January 29, 2017, from http://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/some-experts-say-trump-team-s-falsehoods-are-classic-gaslighting-n711021.

Myers, D. G. (2012). Exploring Social Psychology (7th ed.). New York:    McGraw-Hill.

Rodriguez, D. N., & Strange, D. (2014). False memories for dissonance inducing events Memory, 23(2), 203-212. doi:10.1080/09658211.2014.881501

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skip to toolbar