“This paper was several years in the making, starting as a result of the 2016 election, and was designed to address why some people might view favorably a political figure with a history of business failures, bankruptcies, misogynistic statements caught on video, use of charity money for a self-portrait, etc,” explained study author Craig Neumann, a Regents Professor of Psychology at the University of North Texas.

To investigate these links, the researchers conducted two large surveys with a total of over 9,000 participants from the United States. The first sample consisted of 1,000 men recruited online, about one-third of whom were racial or ethnic minorities. The second sample included 8,047 men and women who completed personality questionnaires on a public psychology website.

Participants in both samples completed a range of validated questionnaires measuring political attitudes, personality traits, and empathy. Political ideology was assessed through questions about general political orientation, preferences for military versus social spending, support for gun control, and evaluations of Trump’s first term as president. The researchers used structural equation modeling, a statistical technique that allows for the testing of relationships between multiple variables at once, while accounting for measurement errors.