Trump’s 2024 victory flipped the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives

A 20-week longitudinal study of American voters showed that, after President Donald Trump was elected in 2024, Democratic supporters reported a decrease in well-being, optimism, personal control, and institutional trust, while also experiencing higher cynicism, disrespect, and a stronger conspiracy mentality. In contrast, Republican supporters experienced changes in the opposite direction. The paper was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

In recent years, the public in the U.S. has experienced growing political polarization. This political polarization has increasingly taken the form of affective polarization, meaning that many Democrats and Republicans not only disagree on issues but also hold strongly negative feelings toward the other political side. Many Americans also report a very pessimistic view of their political system, with institutions like the Pew Research Center finding deeply negative views of national politics and Gallup reporting record-high perceptions that the country is divided on important issues.

This polarization shows up in growing distrust of institutions, and that trust now depends heavily on which party controls government rather than on the institutions themselves. It also appears in everyday life through moralized political identities and a tendency to see supporters of the other party as not just mistaken but threatening and un-American. Another manifestation is policy divergence across states, as Republican-led and Democratic-led states increasingly pursue sharply different approaches on issues such as abortion, voting, immigration, and public health.

One major cause of these developments might be the long-term ideological sorting of the two parties, so that liberals are now much more concentrated in the Democratic Party and conservatives in the Republican Party than in earlier decades. Media fragmentation and online information environments have also intensified polarization by repeatedly exposing people to conflict-driven, partisan, and emotionally charged content. Political leaders and activists have contributed by using sharper rhetoric, framing opponents as existential threats, and rewarding confrontation more than compromise. There are other contributing factors as well.

Study author Olga Stavrova and her colleagues explored how psychological well-being and a broad set of other psychological outcomes changed from before to after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. They particularly wanted to explore what the trajectory of these changes looked like for individuals supporting different political candidates.

They conducted a 7-wave longitudinal survey of a politically balanced U.S. sample from 3 weeks before the election to 16 weeks after the election. Participants initially included 747 U.S. voters, but only 515 completed the final wave. The study’s authors collected enough data from 623 participants to be able to include them in their main analyses. Participants were politically balanced—50% were Democrats and 50% were Republicans. Their average age was 45 years, and 36% were men.

The data collection procedure included 7 measurement points. The first was 3 weeks before the election and the last was 1 month after the inauguration, amounting to roughly 20 weeks in total. The second data collection wave took place at the end of Election Day, and the third was launched on the day the results became known.

In each wave, participants completed assessments of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, search and presence of meaning in life, and positive and negative emotions), self-views (self-esteem, optimism, and personal control), and views and experiences of the world (cynicism, experiences of disrespect, conspiracy mentality, and institutional trust). Participants were divided into election “winners” and “losers” based on who they voted for (Trump, Harris, or a third-party candidate). Participants’ political ideology was also assessed by asking them, “How would you describe yourself politically? (1 = extremely liberal, 10 = extremely conservative)”.

Results showed that, as the election results came in showing that Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Democratic supporters reported a decrease in well-being, optimism, and personal control, as well as lower institutional trust. At the same time, they started reporting higher cynicism, more experiences of disrespect, and a stronger conspiracy mentality. While some of these changes started reverting slightly soon after the election, the study authors report that most of them persisted up to 4 months later. Furthermore, the institutional trust of Democratic supporters kept declining throughout the entire study period.

In contrast, Republican supporters tended to experience changes in the opposite direction. This even led to an inversion of differences in institutional trust between the two groups. While at the start of the study Republican supporters tended to report lower institutional trust than Democrats, after the election, Republican supporters reported higher institutional trust than Democratic supporters, and the gap kept growing as the study progressed.

Similarly, the gap between the two groups in optimism increased, with Republican supporters becoming more optimistic and the peak difference occurring immediately after the election. Democratic supporters tended to report fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions than Republican supporters throughout the study period, with the difference being the highest immediately after the election.

“These results challenge the notion of inherent psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, highlighting how such differences can shift depending on which party holds power,” the study’s authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the relationship between major political events and people’s psychological states. However, it should be noted that the study followed changes around a single presidential election. Changes in psychological views and states might be less pronounced or different around other types of political events or even other presidential elections.

The paper “Trajectories of Psychological Outcomes During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election” was authored by Olga Stavrova, Dongning Ren, Sangmin Kim, and Kathleen D. Vohs.