4 hours Ago
President Donald Trump has made a habit of disregarding science. From the microbiology of viruses to the physics of climate change to the economics of tariffs, inconvenient facts have never been known to inconvenience him. There is one branch of science, however, in which his performed ignorance may have a more authentic core and deeper roots than political expedience: psychology.
Now is the time to recite the Goldwater Rule, under which I stipulate that I have never evaluated Donald J. Trump, and I am not assigning him any diagnosis. His approach to governing, however, can usefully be viewed through the lens of personality theory.
Writing in the New York Times on Oct. 22, 2024, Ezra Klein observed that Trump’s chronic disinhibition is characteristic of individuals with low levels of conscientiousness, one of the “Big 5” personality traits. The other four are introversion/extraversion (like most politicians, Trump behaves like an extravert); agreeableness (opinions on this one split the country down the middle); neuroticism (or emotional stability); and openness to experience.
You can be intelligent and still be low in openness to experience. Individuals who score low on this variable tend to be skeptical of change (“Make America great again”), prefer traditional styles of art (stay tuned at the Kennedy Center) and view human nature in rigid, dichotomous terms. (“There are only two genders.
”) Simple, traditional, black-and-white assessments and concrete prescriptions (“Build the wall”) can be appealing, at least to a plurality of the electorate, but they can also be dangerous, particularly when an appreciation of psychological complexity is essential. Consider education for children with disabilities. About 15% of public school students in this country receive special education services for a disability or disabilities.
Trump has demonstrated little interest in special education policy, but comments by his surrogates seem to capture the MAGA view. Here is Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
, on ADHD: “We have an attention deficit problem in this country. You know, attention deficit when you and I were growing up, our parents didn’t use a drug, they used a belt and whipped our butt, you know, and told us to sit down.” It’s an outstanding example of concrete, dichotomous thinking by someone who at minimum had the intelligence to coach a Division I football team.
And this is the issue: a worldview in which there is only one way to learn, one way to behave, one continuum of success or failure may work in some limited, artificial settings (such as Division I football). Broadly applied, however, it does violence to the human condition. It implies that there is only one valid way to be a real person, and efforts to broaden or diversify access and success are fundamentally fraudulent.
Taken to an extreme, this will result in the assertion that psychologically nuanced and sophisticated education of the type critical for children with learning and developmental differences weakens the fabric (or “blood”) of our country. Some people can’t be understood in rigid, black-and-white terms. They live in the both/and, not the either/or.
They exist in the space in between ability and disability, success and failure. A gifted child with ADHD who is chronically bored but can be engaged by accelerated instruction. A teenager with autism spectrum disorder who struggles with social relationships but intuits non-human systems, such as computers.
A student with dyslexia who has poor reading skills but excels at art and music. Other people are characterologically averse to the in-between. They are not inclined to accept complexity, to see shades of gray, or to understand that what is good or true for one person is not good or true for another.
This does not make them irrational or cruel. If imposed on others, however, it may have irrational, cruel consequences. It denies the contributions of psychology and related sciences to education and child development.
It squanders human potential. Ultimately, it may erase from our society those who have a tremendous amount to give if we can understand them and meet them halfway. These are the children I work with every day.
Their neglect and loss is where the closed-mindedness of the Trump movement is taking us unless we open our own minds to see them, and speak out on their behalf. We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website.
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