Max. Classroom Capacity: Trumped Up Teaching II! Lessons From the Past 8 Years of US Presidential Politics for the I-O Psychology Classroom

Loren J. Naidoo, California State University, Northridge

Dear readers,

About 8 years ago I wrote a Max. Classroom Capacity column on the classroom fodder that the 2016 US presidential election provided to I-O psychology instructors. At the time I am writing this column, the 2024 election is still about a month away. By the time you read this, hopefully the results will be known and accepted. Below I revisit the issues that I discussed back in 2016 and add some new ones that have arisen since. In doing so, it struck me how much has changed, and yet at the same time, how much has not. One thing that has remained is my view that US political discourse can offer a valuable means of engaging students in I-O psychology principles and concepts, though not without some pitfalls. Below I share my experiences, both good and bad, in discussing these issues in my classes over the past 8 years.

Many students have very strong views of political figures and issues, in different directions, which is like an elevator that can boost student engagement in the course material. At the same time, great care must be taken not to alienate students, put them on the defensive, or create a classroom climate where students are afraid to say anything that may offend someone. I have found that making the following statements helps to set the right tone for a discussion of such fraught political issues (adapt these as best fits your own situation):

• It’s not my intention to take sides, though I also won’t pretend that I am unbiased.
• Here are my biases… (I am a Canadian-born progressive who is a registered independent voter in the US, and a leadership researcher fascinated by political leadership).
• For a democracy to function, we don’t all have to have the same views on political issues, but we do have to be able to talk about them with each other in a respectful manner.
• Politics offer much shared experience with which to learn about key concepts and principles of I-O psychology.

Let’s get to the issues!

1.  Selection Decisions

In 2016, I highlighted some of the differences between how I-O psychologists would recommend that organizations select leaders and how we select presidents. The discrepancies are perhaps even more glaring now. The timeframe in 2024 is more compact given how recently Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party candidate. At this point, the presidential candidates have debated each other only once. Consequently, many voters may feel like they are operating with a deficit of information concerning Harris as a candidate. On the other hand, arguably, voters know a lot more about Donald Trump as a candidate than they did in 2016. Here’s a comparison of a few key differences.

2016: Trump was a political outsider, having never held an elected office, but was well-known as a reality TV star and businessman; he adopted an economically populist message focused on renegotiating trade deals, building a wall with Mexico to stop illegal immigration, and repealing Obamacare; he faced stark opposition from many Republican Party officials.

2024: Trump now has a 4-year track record as president of the United States (POTUS) in which he enacted anti-immigrant policies (including a policy of separating immigrant children from their families) and renegotiated NAFTA; he was unable to build a wall across the southern border or repeal Obamacare, as he had promised; party officials largely support Trump’s candidacy; he is fully integrated into the Republican Party—indeed his daughter-in-law now co-chairs the Republican National Committee.

2016. Before he won the 2016 election, Trump claimed that the election was rigged and that large scale voter fraud was happening.

2024. After losing the 2020 election Trump claimed that he won and is currently under indictment for working to overturn the election results, including in relation to the violent January 6 protests/soft coup attempt.

2016. Trump started his campaign by describing immigrants as rapists and criminals.

2024. Trump recently claimed that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating peoples’ pets (more on this later) and is calling for mass deportations of immigrants.

2016. Audio of Trump saying that women allow “stars” like him to do anything to them, including grabbing them by the genitals, was released 1 month before the election; it was also widely reported that Trump had gone backstage at a Miss Teen USA pageant while its underage female contestants were changing.

2024. Trump has been found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a department store; Trump was convicted of felony crimes in relation to a series of hush money payments to a porn actor with whom he is alleged to have had an affair prior to the 2016 presidential election; Trump appointees to the supreme court helped overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that protected a woman’s right to an abortion.

In 2016 Clinton had several scandals, including calling half of Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” and an on-again, off-again FBI investigation of her use of a private e-mail server as Secretary of State. In contrast, Harris does not appear to be saddled with any major scandals.

It was inconceivable to many people that a candidate with as much baggage as Trump had in 2016 could be elected. It may seem even more inconceivable that Trump, with even more baggage in 2024 including numerous indictments and a criminal conviction, could be re-elected. Fans of The Princess Bride movie will appreciate the ironic use of the word “inconceivable.”

There is little published research of which I am familiar on the impact of such “red flags” on selection decisions (c.f. Wechtler et al., 2022). Students may benefit from a discussion of how a candidate with a background of scandals or allegations of misconduct might be evaluated for an executive leadership position. There are historical examples of scandal-plagued executive leaders (e.g., Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Ken Lay of Enron), but typically their tenures ended shortly after the scandals came to light. It seems, again, inconceivable that a job applicant with a background like Trump’s would be hired as executive leader in a work organization.

One argument by Trump supporters is that despite the scandals and negative media coverage in 2016, Trump was a successful president who improved their lives, which were otherwise unaffected by all the “noise” concerning his perceived character flaws. This raises the question of what we want from our presidents, or, said differently, what KSAOs we should try to select for? US citizens may have a variety of answers to this question. Or perhaps people simply prefer one candidate over the other and whatever qualities their candidate has are retrofitted into a rationale for supporting that candidate. It seems like a small part of the discussion of presidential candidates involves specific qualifications for the job (KSAs) as opposed to values and character (Os). Many of the cognitive biases that we often discuss when teaching personnel selection might be introduced to students in this way too.

2.  Attitude Measurement and Behavior Prediction

The predictive validity of political polling to assess attitudes and behavioral intentions remains a fruitful discussion topic in a psychometrics class. Whether polls will be more accurate this year compared to 2016 and 2020 remains to be seen. I-O psychologists’ focus on principles of validity and reliability provides a valuable framework for evaluating assessments. They may also help our students evaluate and consume media as well. In one of my undergraduate classes on leadership, we discussed the Harris v. Trump debate that had just happened. I showed several video clips from the debate, including one in which Trump alleged that Haitian illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating peoples’ pets. When I mentioned in passing that there was no evidence to support this claim, to my surprise, a student protested that there was video evidence to support the claim. The student said they had themselves watched videos of immigrants “with fur in their mouths” and that we should not discount this possibility just because a debate moderator said it was false. This was a curveball that I’m not sure I handled perfectly. Perhaps I should have asked the class to weigh in on the validity and reliability of videos found on social media before providing my thoughts. However, I did not want the student to be ostracized or attacked by their classmates. As a scientist and I-O psychologist, my urge was to “Yes, but…” the student, but I also knew that “correcting” the student’s views in that moment would likely elicit a defensive reaction that might undermine their willingness to participate and engage in the class in the future. As an instructor, I feel like it is more important to make students feel included and heard than to point out how wrong they are. You may feel like you’ve done your moral duty, but the student is unlikely to internalize the feedback. I responded that, yes, video evidence can be useful, but videos can also be taken out of context or faked, and leaders and managers should not make public statements describing as fact a claim for which they do not have good quality evidence or about which they are not certain. I pointed out how this aligned with our prior discussions around cases in which students were asked to make managerial decisions based on information that varied in quality, ranging from hard data (e.g., sales are decreasing) to rumors (e.g., I heard that the sales manager is a bad motivator). I was grateful that shortly after the class the student reached out to me to share the video that was referenced (it was not evidence of Trump’s claim). This gave me a chance to express my gratitude to the student for contributing to the class discussion and to recommend several nonpartisan, fact-checking websites. Fake media is a problem likely only to be exacerbated by AI-generated audio and video, raising important epistemological questions that are relevant to the teaching of I-O psychology: How do we know anything? How do we evaluate the quality of evidence? How do we verify that our interpretations of our data are correct?

3.  Issue Framing and Decision Making

In 2016, I discussed the candidates’ framing of issues and how this related to Tversky and Kahneman’s seminal work on how problem framing impacts decision making. Issue framing is just as interesting in 2024, with, for example, considerable attention being spent on Harris’ and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’ framing of Trump and Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance and their policy preferences as “weird.” This framing may be intended to tar the Republican candidates as outgroup members whose views are extreme and don’t align with those of the ingroup. Trump’s rhetoric concerning immigrants arguably has become even more extreme in 2024, having recently called illegal immigrants “animals” and “not human” (Layne et al., 2024). This may serve to identify an outgroup as a scapegoat for multiple societal problems experienced by the ingroup. Although it’s difficult to imagine corporate leaders using such extreme language, these examples are a stimulating way to introduce to students the idea that corporate leaders may purposefully frame issues in ways that motivate their followers in particular ways. Also, as I-O psychologists, we tend to study white-collar jobs; perhaps we need to study migrant workers and blue-collar jobs to better understand the challenges that migrant workers face.

4.  Gender

According to Fortune magazine (Hinchliffe, 2024), in 2016 there were 21 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (4%); there were 52 in 2023 (10%). That’s progress, I suppose, but women are still underrepresented in leadership positions. Harris was the first female vice president. I feel like Harris’ gender has been less of a focus than Clinton’s was. Downplaying her gender seems to have been a deliberate strategy of the Harris campaign (Schneider & Otterbein, 2024). However, recent polling suggests that more people are concerned that gender will be a barrier to electing Harris compared to the same concerns for Clinton measured in 2016 (Price & Sanders, 2024). Additionally, polling suggests a large gender gap in support for the candidates, with women preferring Harris 54–41%, and men preferring Trump 51%–46% (Allen, 2024). Policy differences around reproductive rights likely play a role in this divide, as does Trump’s hypermasculine style. This provides a great introduction to the concept of the “double bind” that female leaders may face in trying to convey both warmth (a gender norm) and competence (a leader norm; e.g., Trzebiatowski et al., 2022).

5.  Leadership

After 4 years of a controversy-filled presidency that included two impeachments, and four subsequent years of legal actions and reporting that have brought to light personal-enrichment schemes, alleged election interference, alleged national security violations, and corruption within the administration, on top of published academic papers (e.g., Barreto et al., 2023; McAdams, 2017; Williams et al., 2020) about his leadership, I think it’s fair to say that Trump provides tremendous fodder for instructors who wish to introduce leadership concepts such as the dark side of charisma and narcissistic leadership. In the early years of Trump’s presidency, I resisted using him as an example when discussing these concepts, but inevitably, students would say some variant of “hey, doesn’t this sound exactly like Trump?” To use a term from the Harris/Walz campaign, it seemed weird NOT to talk about Trump when discussing the dangers posed by unethical charismatic leaders.

Another timely concept that is often discussed in leadership courses is the power-corruption cycle, or the Bathsheba syndrome (e.g., Ludwig & Longenecker, 1993). Leaders with power, access to resources, and no accountability are theorized to enter into a cycle in which they experience increasing distance from their employees, develop an inflated sense of their own self-importance, and elicit compliance, flattery, submissiveness, and dependence from their employees, leading to a sense of privilege, low opinions of employees, feeling “above the law,” poor decisions, and ethical violations. According to this view, finding ways to hold leaders accountable (e.g., having an ombuds, whistleblower policies and protections, independent monitors, etc.), is critical to reducing corruption. In teaching this idea, I used the extremely troubling example of the recent US Supreme Court ruling that holds that presidents are immune to criminal prosecution for core official acts to highlight what NOT to do when it comes to holding powerful people to account (ACLU, 2023). I described it as “bonkers” that in the face of unprecedented criminality by the former occupant of the most powerful position of authority in the world, the Supreme Court made the presidency LESS accountable to the law.

In general, feedback from students suggests that they value these discussions, even if they are not up to date on all the particulars. But, another caveat: one or two students from classes offered around 2020–2021 said on my course evaluations that they didn’t like the criticism of Trump. Considering that CSUN is in liberal Southern California, I take that as a sign that despite my best intentions, my presentation of this material was perceived by a few students as politically motivated, which therefore likely impeded their learning of these important concepts. Part of this was likely due to the course being offered fully online during COVID, which made tracking and managing students’ negative reactions in real time much more challenging. This is a risk of discussing politics in the classroom, but in my view, the rewards far outweigh the risks.

If you have other ideas or experiences to share regarding how to use current political news to help teach I-O psychology, or if you want to debate Trump’s track record, please e-mail me at Loren.Naidoo@csun.edu.

References

Allen, M. (2024, September 2). Gender gap widens in support for Harris vs. Trump: Poll. Axios. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/02/gender-gap-voters-harris-trump-2024-election

American Civil Liberties Union. (2023, July 25). Supreme Court grants Trump broad immunity for official acts, placing presidents above the law [Press release]. ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-grants-trump-broad-immunity-for-official-acts-placing-presidents-above-the-law

Barreto, T. S., Williams, E. A., Sims, R. L., Pillai, R., McCombs, K., & Lowe, K. B. (2023). Charismatic rhetoric, perceptions of charisma and narcissism, and voting behavior: Leadership under crisis. Leadership, 19, 231-254. https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150231165629

Hinchliffe, E. (2024, June 4). The share of Fortune 500 companies run by women CEOs stays flat at 10.4% as pace of change stalls. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2024/06/04/fortune-500-companies-women-ceos-2024/

Layne, N., Slattery, G., & Reid, T. (2024, April 3). Trump calls migrants “animals,” intensifying focus on illegal immigration. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-expected-highlight-murder-michigan-woman-immigration-speech-2024-04-02/

McAdams, D. (2017). The appeal of the primal leader: Human evolution and Donald J. Trump. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 1, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.1.2.45

Price, L., & Sanders, L. (2024, September 28). Americans are more likely to see Harris’ gender as a hurdle than they were for Clinton: AP-NORC poll. AP. https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2024/americans-are-more-likely-to-see-harris-gender-as-a-hurdle-than-they-were-for-clinton-ap-norc-poll/

Schneider, E., & Otterbein, H. (2024, August 19). Kamala Harris is making one big strategic break from Hillary Clinton. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/19/kamala-harris-gender-2024-election-00174530

Trzebiatowski, T., McCluney, C, & Hernandez, M., (2022). Managing the double bind: Women directors’ participation in tactics in the gendered boardroom. Organizational Science, 34, 801-827. ttps://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1599

Wechtler, H. M., Lee, C. I. S. G., Heyden, M. L. M., Felps, W., & Lee, T. W. (2022). The nonlinear relationship between atypical applicant experience and hiring: The red flags perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107, 776-794. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000953

Williams, E. A., Pillai, R., McCombs, K., Lowe, K. B., & Deptula, B. J. (2020). Adaptive and maladaptive narcissism, charisma, and leadership performance: A study of perceptions about the presidential leadership of Donald Trump. Leadership, 16, 661-682. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715020902906