Priming in Politics

Taking into consideration what priming means and the current presidential election, I found Dan Cassino's study very interesting because it explains in further detail why people are supporting republican presidential candidate Donald Trump although his positions and his comments on issues are hostile and most of the time, unreasonable. An analysis by the Washington Post found that most of Trump's supporters were male, white and poor; taking this into account, then the media that the Trump/Pence campaign is releasing is very important because it is priming audiences to believe a certain way in order to gain a response that will lead to the support of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump Jr. uploaded the following ad on his Twitter account in attempt to explain the Syrian refugee crisis in 'simple terms'. This ad is an example of how the Trump campaign is seeking the approval and appealing to their main audience of uneducated white males. If the Trump campaign starts to advertise themselves as a way for men to keep their 'masculinity' then they can potentially gain more supporters on the basis that keeping a female out of office, can keep the threat of feeling less masculine low.

Although Cassino did mention that there is hope in fixing this masculine versus feminine mindset, it is scary to think that people can be primed to believe and thus behave a certain way in order to accommodate the social norm placed by the media presented and/or behavior of others. Since men do "often react in... strong ways to what they see as threats to their masculine identities" it is nice to see that Cassino found that young liberal men are changing that behavior by starting to create a future mindset that both male and female are equal and neither gender is better than the other.