No Evidence

February 10, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

The federal appeals court considering Trump’s travel ban said that the administration had provided no evidence that people from the seven countries had committed terrorist acts in the US.

Trump of course disagrees. In his view, those who oppose the travel ban – including judges and so-called judges – are ignoring a vast global threat. The cause of their ignorance is that the media are underreporting terrorism. “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.”

Even Fox News says that Trump is wrong. (Note that Fox puts this item under “Religion.” Apparently, saying things that aren’t true is a pillar of the Trumpist faith.)

The obvious reason for Trump’s exaggerating the threat is that it justifies his anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies. But some on the left suspect something broader and more ominous –  “authoritarianism, American-style,” as Paul Krugman puts it in his column in today’s New York Times:

Never mind the utter falsity of the claim that bad people are “pouring in,” or for that matter of the whole premise behind the ban. What we see here is the most powerful man in the world blatantly telegraphing his intention to use national misfortune to grab even more power.

Some on the left go even farther. Widespread fear of terror will allow Trump to stifle opposition. Those who protest Trump’s policies will no longer be merely dissenters. They will be traitors, putting the country at risk. As such, they could be thrown in jail.

The hypothesis is this: when members of a group perceive an external threat to the group, they demand more loyalty and are less tolerant of dissent.

It seems logical, and I can think of examples from recent history. But I wondered if there was any support from controlled experiments in social psychology. I asked an expert who knows the literature much better than I do (not all that difficult since I let my subscription to the JPSP lapse somewhere back in the Harding administration). The answer was that we have research on the “rally effect” –  the perception of threat causing people to rally ’round the flag and to support a strong leader.*

But what about throwing dissenters in jail, or whatever the social psych experiment analogy would be? On this, my source wrote:

“I don’t know of anything on intolerance of dissent. That might be an important literature gap to fill!”

Never mind the hint that I should sharpen up my experimenter chops and get to work. What this means for the “more threat, less tolerance of dissent” hypothesis is: “no evidence.” At least, no evidence from controlled experiments.

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* Not all of this research supports the rally effect.