Experiencing vicarious rejection in the wake of the 2016 presidential election

Abstract

Presidential elections in the United States pit two (or more) candidates against each other. Voters elect one and reject the others. This work tested the hypothesis that supporters of a losing presidential candidate may experience that defeat as a personal rejection. Before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, voters reported their current feelings of rejection and social pain, along with potential predictors of these feelings. Relative to Trump supporters, Clinton (losing candidate) supporters reported greater feelings of rejection, lower mood, and reduced fundamental needs post-election, while controlling for pre-election levels of these variables. Moreover, as self–candidate closeness and liberal political orientation increased, so too did feelings of rejection and social pain among Clinton supporters. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding human sensitivity to belonging threats and for the vicarious rejection literature.

Negative and positive partisans’ responses to the 2020 presidential election

“…Regarding our extension hypotheses, these were generally not supported: it appears that negative partisanship is not a stronger predictor of any election‐related outcomes than positive partisanship is. This observation is more consistent with the original authors’ conceptualization in terms of vicarious threat processes (see Claypool et al., 2020) than our attempted reconceptualization in terms of collective (partisan) identification. If participants’ social pain responses were the result of feeling strongly identified with the political fortunes of one side in the election, we should have observed a notable effect of negative partisanship.…”

“…Participants used a link or QR code to access the survey, where they first provided informed consent via a checkbox and then generated a unique code that allowed us to link their responses (if they did the second phase as well) while protecting their anonymity. Then they completed the same 10-item version of the Fundamental Needs and Mood Scale (as a measure of social pain) that Claypool et al (2020) use, based on items from Williams (2009); four political orientation questions adapted by Claypool et al from Janoff-Bulman et al (2008); the likelihood that they would vote in the Presidential election; their preferred ticket; the standard IOS measure adapted from Aron et al (1992); and our new EOS measure for each of the two main parties (EOS position randomized with IOS always between them; see Figure 1). These were followed by the same demographic questions asked by Claypool et al (2020), with the addition of one question asking in which state the participant was registered to vote.…”

“…To test H1a, we followed the earlier authors' lead in computing indices of basic need fulfilment, the main dependent variable-both a full composite in the way that Young et al (2009) handled it and separated out into subscales, as Claypool et al (2020) handled it. We then conducted a series of ANCOVAs comparing Democratic-ticket voters to Republican-ticket voters on these dependent variables after the election, controlling for their preelection levels.…”

“…Recall our prediction for winning-side voters that preelection EOS should be associated with decreases in social pain after such an affirming experience. (Claypool et al (2020) found that IOS was not associated with shifts among these voters, so we did not frame this in terms of a comparison between forms of partisanship.) To test H3, we restricted the sample to Democratic-ticket voters and then computed the partial correlation between (preelection) partisanship and postelection outcomes, controlling for preelection outcomes.…”

“…Does it matter when partisanship is measured? Claypool et al (2020) measured positive partisanship after the election and justified their use of it as a predictor, despite the timing of measurement, on the basis that Clinton voters' IOS scores did not differ from Trump voters' IOS scores. However, this does not mean that it did not change across the election.…”