“Making America Great Again”: System Justification in the U.S. Presidential Election of 2016

Abstract

The U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016 was interpreted by many as a repudiation of the social and economic status quo. Others suggested that support for Trump reflected opposition to social change, as exemplified by the nostalgic slogan “Make America Great Again.” We consider the possibility that many American voters were indeed frustrated by the consequences of global competition under capitalism but were unwilling or unable to criticize the capitalist system and the existing social order. Consistent with this notion, we observed—in a nationally representative sample of 1,500 American respondents who were surveyed shortly before the election—that economic and gender-specific system justification were positively associated with support for Trump, but after adjusting for these variables general system justification was negatively associated with support for Trump (and positively associated with support for Hillary Clinton). Trump supporters clearly rejected liberal governance under President Obama, which they may have perceived as threatening to the traditional social order, but they strongly justified economic and gender-based disparities in American society.

Full text

“Making America Great Again”: System Justification in the U.S.
Presidential Election of 2016
Flávio Azevedo
University of Cologne
John T. Jost
New York University
Tobias Rothmund
University of Koblenz-Landau and Technische Universität Darmstadt
The U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump in 2016 was interpreted by many as a
repudiation of the social and economic status quo. Others suggested that support for Trump
reflected opposition to social change, as exemplified by the nostalgic slogan “Make America
Great Again.” We consider the possibility that many American voters were indeed frustrated by
the consequences of global competition under capitalism but were unwilling or unable to
criticize the capitalist system and the existing social order. Consistent with this notion, we
observed—in a nationally representative sample of 1,500 American respondents who were
surveyed shortly before the election—that economic and gender-specific system justification
were positively associated with support for Trump, but after adjusting for these variables general
system justification was negatively associated with support for Trump (and positively associated
with support for Hillary Clinton). Trump supporters clearly rejected liberal governance under
President Obama, which they may have perceived as threatening to the traditional social order,
but they strongly justified economic and gender-based disparities in American society.
What is the significance of this article for the general public?
In
a
nationally
representative
survey
of
1,500
Americans
conducted
shortly
before
the
2016
election,
we
observed
that
belief
in
the
legitimacy
of
the
economic
system
and
gender
relations
in
society
were
positively
associated
with
support
for
Donald
Trump
(over
Hillary
Clinton),
but
after
adjusting
for
these
variables
support
for
the
legitimacy
of
the
social
system
overall
was
negatively
associated
with
support
for
Trump
(and
positively
associated
with
support
for
Clinton).
These
findings
are
consistent
with
the
notion
that
Trump
supporters
rejected
the
status
quo
of
liberal
governance
under
President
Obama
but
justified
economic
and
gender-based
dis-
parities
in
society.
Keywords: system justification, gender, capitalism, economic attitudes, political ideology
Let’s make America great again.
—Campaign slogan, Ronald Reagan for President,
1980
The surprising election of Donald Trump as
President of the United States of America in
2016 was interpreted by many as a revolt
against the status quo. Throughout the cam-
paign, Trump was widely perceived as an out-
sider, having never held any political office,
attacking “business as usual” in Washington,
Flávio Azevedo, Center for Comparative Politics,
University of Cologne; John T. Jost, Department of
Psychology, New York University; Tobias Rothmund,
Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-
Landau, and Department of Psychology, Technische
Universität Darmstadt.
This research was funded in part by University of
Cologne, Germany, New York University, USA, and
the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. We
thank Elvira Basevich and Lawrence Jost for helpful
comments on an earlier version of this article.
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and railing against the “failed” legacies of the
Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations with
promises to “drain the swamp.” Trump’s most
enthusiastic supporters seemed to be Republi-
cans who were furious with the government
(e.g., Bump, 2016;Guo, 2016).
The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton,
meanwhile, was derided as the “establishment
candidate.” Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence,
for instance, referred to her as “Secretary of the
Status Quo.” Thus, on the morning after the
election, the Washington Post concluded: “Don-
ald Trump was elected the nation’s 45th presi-
dent in the stunning culmination of a campaign
that defied expectations and conventions at ev-
ery turn and galvanized legions of aggrieved
Americans in a loud repudiation of the status
quo” (Tumulty, Rucker, & Gearan, 2016).
Pundits lined up to support this general inter-
pretation. According to an opinion editorial in
the New York Times, “Mr. Trump personified
the vote against the status quo, one still not
working out for [the White working class],” and
that is why “many Trump supporters held a
progressive outlook” (Kuhn, 2016). Likewise,
Packer (2016) wrote,
The great truth was that large numbers of Republican
voters, especially less educated ones, weren’t consti-
tutional originalists, libertarian free traders, members
of the Federalist Society, or devout readers of the Wall
Street Journal editorial page. They actually wanted
government to do more things that benefitted them (as
opposed to benefitting people they saw as undeserving)
. . . The Republican Party hasn’t been truly conserva-
tive for decades. Its most energized elements are not
trying to restore stability or preserve the status quo.
Rather, they are driven by a sense of violent opposi-
tion: against changes in color and culture that appear to
be sweeping away the country they once knew; against
globalization, which is as revolutionary and threaten-
ing as the political programs of the Jacobins and the
anarchists once were.
No less an intellectual authority than Cornel
West declared that Trump’s election signaled
the “end of neoliberalism,” as practiced by
Obama, Bush, and Clinton—all of whom ig-
nored “Wall Street crimes,” rejected home-
owner bailouts, and presided over increasing
economic inequality and “war crimes” abroad.
According to West, it was a “lethal fusion of
economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating”
that “brought neoliberalism to its knees”—not
in line with progressive populism, as Kuhn
(2016) and Packer (2016) implied, but with a
staunchly reactionary “neofascist bang.”
Not quite everyone was convinced that the
election of 2016 was a “change” election, how-
ever. Chapman (2016) argued that it “would be
more accurate to say the outcome stemmed
from too much change”—and that the mood of
the populace signified resistance to an “endless
transformation [that] extends to the realms of
culture, religion and family life” and that has
provoked tremendous anxiety. Thus, Trump
supporters were “voting for something old.
‘Make America Great Again’ is a cry of nostal-
gia.” Indeed, Trump’s favorite slogan was bor-
rowed from the successful presidential cam-
paign of Ronald Reagan, the revered
conservative steward of American business and
“family values” in the 1980s.
There is also something strange about the
suggestion that working-class Whites’ dissatis-
faction with capitalism—and the “neoliberal
global order”—pushed them into the arms of
Donald Trump. After all, Trump has long been
one of the nation’s best-known capitalists—a
billionaire real estate mogul who inherited
much of his wealth and became especially fa-
mous as a star of “reality television.” As Gar-
rison Keillor remarked, “The disaffected white
blue-collar workers elected a Fifth Avenue ty-
coon to rescue them from the elitists.” Ameri-
cans could have elected Bernie Sanders, who
(as a democratic socialist) would have posed a
genuine danger to the economic status quo;
instead they chose a famous businessman, a
country club owner, a successful maven of the
financial elite.
So which is it? Was Trump’s election fueled
by an utter repudiation of the status quo, and a
popular thirst for genuine change in America?
Or was it a reaction against too many changes
wrought by the forces of globalization and a
desperate attempt to restore much-needed sta-
bility and order to American society? Similar
questions were raised a few years earlier about
the Tea Party, a right-wing movement that
promised to “restore America’s founding prin-
ciples of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally
limited government, and free markets” (www
.teapartypatriots.org/ourvision). On a certain
level, the Tea Party posed a challenge to the
status quo, especially to the presidency of
Barack Obama. On another level, however, the
Tea Party represented an effort to defend “the
AZEVEDO, JOST, AND ROTHMUND

American way” against threats directed at the
prevailing social order that were perceived as
coming from liberal governance.
General, Economic, and Gender-Specific
System Justification
A study of attitudes toward the Tea Party was
conducted by Hennes, Nam, Stern, and Jost
(2012) under the auspices of system justifica-
tion theory, which holds that people are moti-
vated (often at a nonconscious level of aware-
ness) to legitimize aspects of the societal status
quo (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). Because the
social systems on which human beings depend
provide a sense of safety, security, familiarity,
predictability, and solidarity, it is psychologi-
cally painful to regard them as irredeemably
awful or unjust. To maintain some semblance of
psychological equanimity, then, most people
prefer to defend and justify the status quo than
to tear it down literally or metaphorically (Jost
& Hunyady, 2003,2005;Jost, Ledgerwood, &
Hardin, 2008). Thus, Hennes and colleagues
(2012) observed that support for the Tea Party
was associated not with criticism of the Amer-
ican system but with a spirited ideological de-
fense of it. Importantly, supporters (vs. detrac-
tors) of the Tea Party scored significantly higher
on general (or diffuse, societal) system justifi-
cation, endorsing statements such as these: “In
general, the American system operates as it
should,” and “Most policies serve the greater
good.” They also scored higher on economic
system justification, which is measured with
items such as these: “Economic positions are
legitimate reflections of people’s achieve-
ments,” and “Most people who don’t get ahead
in our society should not blame the system; they
have only themselves to blame.”
From a system justification perspective, it can
be difficult—for psychological reasons—for
people to denounce the social systems and in-
stitutions on which their livelihoods depend,
even if they are relatively disadvantaged by
those very institutions, such as capitalism (Jost
& Hunyady, 2003,2005). For example, it may
be the case that the economic interests of the
working class would be best served by electing
a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders, and
yet members of this group may find it psycho-
logically aversive to support his policies. If this
analysis is valid, it is easy to see how American
workers could be enraged by the results or
consequences of global competition under cap-
italism (and the “neoliberal world order”) with-
out actually criticizing or rejecting the capitalist
system at an ideological level. That is, defensive
motivational processes may inhibit people from
diagnosing the economic causes of their dissat-
isfaction and lead them to direct their anger
elsewhere, often at convenient scapegoats, such
as immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, lib-
erals, feminists, atheists, activists, and so on
(see also Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson,
& Sanford, 1950;Altemeyer, 2006;Lundskow,
2012). It may be counterintuitive, but it is con-
sistent with a system justification perspective
that people would suffer under the status quo
and yet behave in such a way as to maintain
important elements of it (e.g., van der Toorn et
al., 2015).
In thinking about the dynamics of the presi-
dential election of 2016, it is important to bear
in mind that there is a multiplicity of “systems”
that people are capable of criticizing or defend-
ing. In the research literature on system justifi-
cation, a number of different scales have been
developed to measure ideological support for
American society in general, which includes the
government (Kay & Jost, 2003), as well as the
economic system (Jost & Thompson, 2000) and
the system of gender relations between men and
women, including the division of labor within
the family (Jost & Kay, 2005). Although scores
on these various scales are usually positively
correlated with one another—and all tend to be
positively correlated with political conservatism
(Cichocka & Jost, 2014;Jost, Nosek, & Gos-
ling, 2008), it is possible for people to be en-
thusiastic supporters of some systems (or as-
pects of the societal status quo) but not others.
In the case of Donald Trump’s supporters,
they appeared to be strong critics of the gov-
ernment, especially under President Obama, but
it seems unlikely that they were especially crit-
ical of the capitalist system or of traditional
gender roles in society. On the contrary, Trump
represented for many the pinnacle of economic
success under capitalism, and the attitudes he
expressed about gender issues during the cam-
paign would be characterized as fairly tradi-
tional and socially conservative, if not down-
right sexist (see also Wayne, Valentino, &
Oceno, 2016). It may be most reasonable, then,
to posit that Trump supporters were system-
SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION IN 2016 ELECTION

challenging in a few respects but system-
justifying in several others.
A Pre-Election Survey of American
Public Opinion
In the months leading up to the 2016 presi-
dential election, we hired a professional survey
firm (SSI; www.surveysampling.com) to recruit
a nationally representative sample of 1,500
Americans and to administer a variety of online
questionnaires designed to measure social and
political attitudes, including general (Kay &
Jost, 2003), economic (Jost & Thompson,
2000), and gender-specific system justification
scales (Jost & Kay, 2005).
1
The demographic
characteristics of the sample, which closely mir-
rored the population at large, are listed in Table
1. We also asked respondents for their evalua-
tions and preferences with respect to the major
presidential candidates, including Republicans
Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Rand
Paul, as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton and
Bernie Sanders. The results of the survey re-
vealed clear patterns of correspondence be-
tween the holding of system-justifying attitudes
and political preferences.
Consistent with past research (Jost, Nosek et
al., 2008;Jost et al., 2014), people who identi-
fied themselves as rightist (vs. leftist), more
socially and economically conservative (vs. lib-
eral), and more (vs. less) religious scored sig-
nificantly higher on measures of general, eco-
nomic, and gender-specific system justification
(see Table 2). As shown in Figure 1, Republi-
cans also scored higher than Democrats on all
three types of system justification, with Inde-
pendents scoring in the middle on two of the
three types.
At the same time, there were some interesting
differences with respect to system justification
in different domains. For one thing, Indepen-
dents scored lower than Democrats on general
(or diffuse) system justification. For another,
people who were higher in general system jus-
tification tended to rate both Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton as slightly more likable (r’s ⫽
.10 and .07, respectively, both p’s ⬍.01). How-
ever, those who endorsed economic and gender-
specific system justification judged Trump as
significantly more likable (r’s ⫽.41 and .39,
p⬍.001) and Clinton as significantly less lik-
able (r’s ⫽⫺.39 and ⫺.32, p⬍.001).
When we entered all three types of system
justification (plus religiosity as an adjustment
variable) in multiple regression models, we ob-
tained even clearer results. Liking for Trump
was positively associated with economic (␤⫽
0.73, t[1,495)] ⫽8.41, p⬍.001) and gender-
specific (␤⫽0.67, t[1495] ⫽8.90, p⬍.001)
system justification, but it was negatively asso-
ciated with general system justification (␤⫽
⫺0.47, t[1,495] ⫽⫺7.15, p⬍.001). Liking for
Clinton, on the other hand, was negatively as-
sociated with economic (␤⫽⫺0.85, t[1495] ⫽
10.61, p⬍.001) and gender-specific (␤⫽
⫺0.65, t[1,495) ⫽⫺9.42, p⬍.001) system
justification, but it was positively associated
with general system justification (␤⫽0.90, t
[1,495] ⫽14.65, p⬍.001).
In Figure 2, we have plotted general, eco-
nomic, and gender-specific system justification
scores as a function of specific candidate pref-
erences. Results reveal that supporters of the
conservative standard-bearer, Jeb Bush, exhib-
ited high levels of system justification across the
board, whereas supporters of the liberal/
progressive challenger, Bernie Sanders, exhib-
ited low levels of system justification across the
board. Consistent with the results for candidate
evaluations, supporters of Hillary Clinton ex-
hibited fairly high levels of general system jus-
tification and low levels of economic and gen-
der-specific system justification. The opposite
combination was observed among supporters of
the Republican candidates. Followers of Donald
Trump, Ted Cruz, and especially Rand Paul
were low in general system justification but
high in terms of economic and gender-specific
system justification.
As shown in Figure 3, these basic patterns cut
across lines of social class. At every level of
respondent income, Trump supporters were sig-
nificantly higher than Clinton supporters in both
1
The survey was fielded from August 16 to September
16, 2016. Of the 2,424 participants directed to the survey,
1,885 finished the survey (attrition rate 22%). We followed
recommendations to minimize the problem of careless re-
sponding in online studies (Meade & Craig, 2012). Specif-
ically, we employed 10 attention questions and time con-
trols to check for data quality. There were 385 participants
who failed more than one attention check or finished the
survey in under ⬃22 min and were therefore excluded from
the sample. For the 1,500 participants who successfully
finished the survey, completion time was 67 min on average
(MD: 51 min).
AZEVEDO, JOST, AND ROTHMUND

economic and gender-specific system justification.
Perhaps surprisingly, there were no differences (at
any income level) between Trump and Clinton sup-
porters with respect to general system justification.
We also conducted logistic regression analy-
ses in which the three types of system justifica-
tion were used to predict voting choices be-
tween Trump and Clinton. Once again,
economic and gender-specific system justifica-
tion were associated with an increase in the
probability of voting for Trump, whereas gen-
eral system justification was associated with a
decrease in the probability of voting for him.
Each unit increase in mean economic system
justification increased the odds of voting for
Trump by a factor of 2.95 (␤⫽1.08, Wald
␹
2
[1] ⫽10.10, p⬍.001), holding all other
variables constant; and each unit increase in
mean gender-specific system justification in-
creased the odds of voting for Trump by a factor
of 2.25 (␤⫽0.80, Wald ␹
2
[1] ⫽9.20, p⬍
.001). Conversely, a one unit increase in the
mean of general system justification decreased
the odds of voting for Trump by a factor of 0.46
(␤⫽0.78, Wald ␹
2
[1] ⫽⫺9.80, p⬍.001).
This study demonstrates that there are multi-
ple meaningful dimensions (or domains) of sys-
tem justification. That is, there is more than one
sense in which someone may be said to accept
or reject the societal status quo. The same per-
son may be an enthusiastic defender of the
capitalist economic system (or the gendered di-
vision of labor within the family) but not the
federal government (or vice versa). Overall, we
found strong support for the notion that these
different forms of system justification make in-
Table 1
Demographic Characteristics of Survey Respondents
Data
Frequencies
U.S. Census
Frequencies Data vs. Census
Data vs.
Census in %
18–24 years 193 196 ⫺3⫺1.55
25–34 years 264 263 1 .38
35–44 years 263 263 0 .00
45–54 years 292 288 4 1.37
55–64 years 234 233 1 .43
65⫹254 258 ⫺4⫺1.57
Subtotal Age 1,500 1,500 — —
Female 760 738 22 2.89
Male 740 762 ⫺22 ⫺2.97
Subtotal Gender 1,500 1,500 — —
Less than $15,000 178 195 ⫺17 ⫺9.55
$15,000-$24,999 180 180 0 .00
$25,000-$34,999 176 165 11 6.25
$35,000-$49,999 227 210 17 7.49
$50,000-$74,999 292 270 22 7.53
$75,000-$99,999 192 180 12 6.25
$100,000-$149,999 160 180 ⫺20 ⫺12.50
$150,000⫹95 120 ⫺25 ⫺26.32
Subtotal Income 1,500 1,500 — —
Less than High-school 51 210 ⫺159 ⫺311.76
High-school 475 435 40 8.42
Some college 471 435 36 7.64
Bachelor 310 270 40 12.90
Graduate 193 150 43 22.28
Subtotal Education 1,500 1,500 — —
Democrat 747 750 ⫺3⫺.40
Republican 753 750 3 .40
Subtotal Party ID 1,500 1,500 — —
Note. Table 1 shows the distribution of responses in the collected data for each criterion (age, gender, income, education,
and party identification). The first column displays the frequencies of collected data while the second reports on the expected
frequencies based on the 2014 U.S. Census (http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview
.xhtml?pid⫽ACS_14_1YR_S0201&prodType⫽table).
SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION IN 2016 ELECTION

dependent contributions to political preferences.
In statistical terms, general, economic, and gen-
der-specific system justification explained
unique amounts of variance in voting intentions.
Overall, by taking into account all three types of
system justification, this model accurately clas-
sified candidate choices 77% of the time.
Concluding Remarks
When Blanchar (2017) asked a sample of 503
Americans to try to explain why Donald Trump
had won the recent presidential election, he
discovered that the most popular answer was
that “voters desired a change from the status
quo.” There is one rather limited sense in which
our findings, which are based on a nationally
representative sample of 1,500 Americans, are
consistent with this explanation. Supporters of
Donald Trump did score lower in general (or
diffuse) system justification than supporters of
Jeb Bush, and they scored as low on this mea-
sure as supporters of Hillary Clinton.
More to the point, when general, economic,
and gender-specific forms of system justifica-
tion were entered as simultaneous predictors
of voting intentions, we observed that general
system justification was positively associated
with the likelihood of voting for Clinton over
Trump. In a limited historical sense, then, it
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics, Including Correlations Among Social and Political Attitudes
MSD123456
1. Left/right ideology 5.31 2.45 —
2. Social conservatism 4.93 2.76 .84 —
3. Economic conservatism 5.48 2.63 .82 .72 —
4. Religiosity 5.15 2.79 .46 .53 .35 —
5. General SJ 5.06 1.32 .15 .10 .17 .11 —
6. Economic SJ 4.93 1.10 .53 .48 .57 .20 .38 —
7. Gender-specific SJ 5.44 1.37 .46 .42 .45 .21 .52 .61
Note. We used Spearman’s correlations, p⬍.001 (N⫽1,500) for all cases. We adjusted for familywise error rate with
Holm correction. All variables ranged from 1 to 9, with higher values reflecting more right-wing orientation, more
conservatism, more religiosity, and higher scores on system justification.
Figure 1. General, economic, and gender-specific system justification as a function of
political partisanship.
AZEVEDO, JOST, AND ROTHMUND

appears that Clinton was indeed regarded as
the “status quo” candidate, and that this was
seen as undesirable by a good number of
voters. In retrospect, it is conceivable that the
Clinton campaign may have overestimated
the extent to which voters— especially poten-
tial Democratic voters—preferred social sta-
bility over social change.
After all, liberals and Democrats tend to
score consistently lower on all types of sys-
tem justification, in comparison with conser-
vatives and Republicans (e.g., Jost, Nosek, et
al., 2008). We replicated this result once
again. And, despite the fact that Trump sup-
porters exhibited less general system justifi-
cation than supporters of Jeb Bush, they ex-
hibited very high levels of economic and
gender-specific system justification. When all
three types of system justification were en-
tered as simultaneous predictors of voting
intentions, it was very clear that economic
and gender-specific system justification were
positively associated with the likelihood of
voting for Trump over Clinton. Thus, Trump
supporters did reject the status quo of liberal,
Democratic governance under President
Obama, which they may have perceived as
threatening to mainstream cultural traditions
Figure 2. General, economic, and gender-specific system justification as a function of
candidate preferences.
SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION IN 2016 ELECTION

(see also Hennes et al., 2012), but they cer-
tainly did not challenge the status quo in a
more profound sense.
On the contrary, Trump supporters—like
political conservatives in general—strongly
justified economic and gender-based dispari-
ties in society. These findings cast doubt on
the proposition that voting for Trump re-
flected anything like a self-conscious, ideo-
logical challenge to the neoliberal, “free mar-
ket” system or to other extant institutions and
social arrangements. Supporters of Donald
Trump may well have been deeply frustrated
by the economic consequences of the capital-
ist system in the United States, but—at this
point at least—we see no evidence that they
placed any blame upon the system that was
the source of those frustrations.
Figure 3. Economic (top) and gender-specific (bottom) system justification as a function of
preferences for Trump versus Clinton at various levels of respondent income.
AZEVEDO, JOST, AND ROTHMUND

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AZEVEDO, JOST, AND ROTHMUND