...In a series of experiments (click here) I conducted in 2010, I found that exposure to mildly violent political metaphors such as “fighting for our future” increased general support for political violence among people with aggressive personalities.
After participants answered personality questions about aggression, I randomly assigned them to read a short campaign speech that included either violent metaphors or nonviolent substitutes. Then, participants responded to questions about political threats, property damage and physical violence against leaders. Among interpersonally aggressive people, those who read the violent text had higher average political violence scores compared with those who saw nonviolent language. People with low aggressive personality scores were unaffected by language differences. In other words, aggressive people are already more likely to support political violence, and violent language makes them more so. The mild metaphors I used in these studies match well with common political language, so the explicit violent language we have heard recently could have stronger effects.
My findings are consistent with other research about how media violenceprimes aggressive behavior in people who are predisposed to it. What’s more, perpetrators of political violence, most of whom are men, often have histories of interpersonal violence and domestic abuse.
We also have evidence that Trump’s own words have caused audiences to behave worse in the past. In national experiments from 2016 and 2017, University of Massachusetts political scientist Brian Schaffner found that exposure to Trump’s racist comments about Mexicans during his campaign made people more likely to write offensive statements that were toward not just Mexicans but other groups. Indeed, people with prejudices toward one group often dislike other groups, suggesting that bigoted language has consequences beyond targeted groups. Furthermore, people whose racial and religious identities align with the demographics of their political party are more hostile toward partisan opponents, as Lilliana Mason, of the University of Maryland, College Park shows in her book....
