“I’ve been talking about negatives, and you’re up on him!” said an astounded [Republican pollster] Frank Luntz. “That’s the story of Trump’s poll numbers.” (From Guo, 2015)

Controversial United States President Donald Trump presents a bit of a puzzle. Since the beginning of his candidacy during the election season, Trump’s poll numbers suggested that a lot of people did not like him, and yet in actual election results he has garnered surprising levels of support that belie those negatives (Guo, 2015).

This juxtaposition can be seen in Trump’s often alarming use of non-normatively negative language. From his comments about Mexicans being “murderers” and “rapists” (Guo, 2015), to questioning POW John McCain as a war hero (Noble, 2015), to his insult of former GOP rival Carly Fiorina: "Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?... are we serious?" (Cohen, 2017), Trump has shown that he does not conform to typical political language. Yet despite all of his often bracingly insensitive language, Trump won both the Republican Party nomination for president and ultimately the General Election.

One explanation for Trump’s success involves a socio-historical discussion that is essentially exclusive to conservative American politics (see, e.g., Oliver & Rahn, 2016). For example, evidence suggests that increased authoritarianism, increased social dominance, and lower cognitive abilities were all predictive of Trump support during the election (Choma & Hanoch, 2017). Although these dimensions are important in our understanding of Trump support, they may also lead to a dismissal of Trump’s electoral success as a function solely of traits associated with ideologically extreme conservatism in the U.S. And while it is true that his supporters are largely ideologically conservative (e.g., Burnett, 2016; Pew Research Center, 2016; Thompson, 2016), that is not the whole story. In the present article, we expand upon existing social psychological theories of deviance to argue that part of his support came from a source that is not directly ideological in nature: Namely, that the surprising levels of support for Trump were the result of the salience of restrictive communication norms. In order to establish the connection between psychological theory about cultural norms and Donald Trump, we first discuss a theoretical framework on what causes deviance from cultural norms in the first place.

Restrictive Communication Norms and Donald Trump TOP] Viewed from this norm communication perspective, Donald Trump is not the cause of cultural deviance – rather, support for him is (in part) the product of the salience of restrictive communication norms. To illustrate, we discuss the specific set of communication norms in question and Donald Trump’s overlap with those norms. The Backfiring of Positively-Aimed Communication Norms TOP] An extremely powerful set of norms in North American society, often called “political correctness” (or “PC”) norms, explicitly attempts to remove negative group-relevant language (see Conway et al., 2009). As a result, in situations where the norms are in evidence, they create particularly strong public pressure to restrict one’s communication. Although sometimes derided, few academics would disagree that the practical goal of the political correctness movement is well-aimed. One of the distinguishing features of modern theories of norm backfiring is that they do not require a norm to have a negative aim itself in order to ultimately show negative effects. Indeed, some research suggests that over-salience of PC norms may actually undermine its positive goal and produce more negative communication in the long-term. In one set of research studies involving fictitious scenarios, the stated presence of a heavy-handed PC norm caused participants to later report that they would communicate more negatively about a stereotyped fraternity to a fictional “friend” in the scenarios (Conway et al., 2009; see also Conway & Schaller, 2005). Donald Trump as Cultural Revolt Against Restrictive Communication Norms TOP] “It’s not just that Trump is willing to be provocative – he’s exciting to many people because he says things they feel they can’t say.” (From Guo, 2015) So there is reason to suspect that consistent salience of PC norms might cause a crack on the cultural pane of glass. Is there reason to suspect that Donald Trump might be a product of that crack? Yes. As the above quote suggests, it may be in part because of his politically incorrect rhetoric that he garnered support. At a general level, evidence suggests that Trump’s grandiose rhetorical style was one of the reasons he won the Republican primary (Ahmadian, Azarshahi, & Paulhus, 2017). Further and more specifically, polls from the election cycle suggested that people liked his provocative language (Guo, 2015; Thompson, 2016) and that feeling voiceless better predicted Trump support than multiple other variables, some of which include age, race, and attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, and Hispanics (Thompson, 2016). And indeed, Trump himself has publically recognized the value of this anti-communication norm stance. As he said at the Republican Primary debate in August 2015: "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness” (quoted in Guo, 2015).