Deplorables: Emotions, Political Sophistication, and Political Intolerance

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Christopher Claassen,James Gibson,Joan Barceló
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18820864
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X18820864

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(2) 252 –262

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18820864

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Article

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of

Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?

The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—

you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he

has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used

to only have 11,000 people—now 11 million. He tweets and

retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now,

some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they

are not America.

Hillary Clinton

Populist and authoritarian political movements are on the

rise across the world. In countries as diverse as the United

States, Turkey, Hungary, Brazil, and Italy, authoritarian-

populist leaders or parties are in government. One of the hall-

marks of these movements is their crass majoritarianism,

sometimes associated with a call for minority and dissident

voices to be silenced, whether by the state or by the very sup-

porters of these movements. Thus, it would appear that polit-

ical tolerance, always the most elusive of democratic values,

is once again under threat in many democracies.

A great deal of research has attempted to understand why

some citizens extend civil rights to groups they dislike, while

others do not (see Gibson, 2006; Sullivan & Hendriks, 2009).

Since intolerance represents a negative, almost instinctive

reaction to a threatening outgroup, a particularly interesting

approach has been to examine the emotional roots of

intolerance (see for examples, Haas & Cunningham, 2014;

Kuklinski, Riggle, Ottati, Schwarz, & Wyer, 1991; Marcus,

Sullivan, Theiss-Morse, & Stevens, 2005; Marcus, Sullivan,

Theiss-Morse, & Wood, 1995; Skitka, Bauman, & Mullen,

2004).

Yet unresolved issues remain in the study of emotion and

intolerance. First, which emotion (if any) most powerfully

drives intolerance? Noting the prominent role played by

threat in predicting intolerance, some scholars have argued

that intolerance is a reaction to fear and anxiety (e.g., Marcus

et al., 1995). Others have emphasized the role played by

anger (Skitka et al., 2004), which, in intergroup settings, can

produce a confrontational and aggressive response to target

groups (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000). Yet others have

made the case for a unique influence of hatred—indeed,

Halperin, Canetti-Nisim, and Hirsch-Hoefler (2009) argue

that hatred is perhaps the most powerful driver of

intolerance.

A second unresolved issue concerns the interplay between

emotion and political sophistication. While intolerance is

820864APRXXX10.1177/1532673X18820864American Politics ResearchGibson et al.

research-article2019

1Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA

2University of Glasgow, UK

Corresponding Author:

James Gibson, Washington University, Campus Box 1063; One Brookings

Drive, St Louis, MO 63108, USA.

Email: jgibson@wustl.edu

Deplorables: Emotions, Political

Sophistication, and Political Intolerance

James Gibson1, Christopher Claassen2 , and Joan Barceló1

Abstract

While scholars have shown strong interest in the role of emotions in politics, questions remain about the connections

between emotions and political intolerance. First, it is not clear which emotion (if any) is likely to produce intolerance

toward one’s disliked groups, with different studies favoring hatred, anger, or fear. Second, it is unclear whether these effects

of emotion are moderated by sophistication, as some conventional political thought argues. Do the less-sophisticated rely

on emotions when making judgments, therefore being less tolerant than sophisticates, who rely on reason? Here, we test

both hypotheses using a large representative sample Americans. We find that hatred, anger, and fear are significantly but only

modestly related to political intolerance. Moreover, the effects of emotions on intolerance are not consistently stronger

among the unsophisticated. These findings provide little support for the conventional assumption that the less-sophisticated

rely on their emotions in making political judgments.

Keywords

political tolerance, emotion, political sophistication, deplorables