Behaviour of Donald Trump: A Psychological Analysis

This article analyzes the behaviour of Donald Trump using theories of emotion, stress, learning, personality disorder, and group influence. It discusses how social learning theory fits best in Trump's behaviour, how the James-Lange theory of emotion applies to him, how he is suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and how he is a disgrace to his country on various levels.

Running Head: Psychology 0
Psychology

Psychology 1
Introduction
President Donald Trump unleashes false statements just two weeks to the mid-term
elections. It is spinning new takes on the truth with increasing regularity and speed in the
mid-term elections. They threaten a government shutdown to try to compel Congress to
approve money on the southern border. The issue of a small pay raise for federal employees
could not be ensnared and U.S military has sent to shut down the southern border. The Trump
is facing the problem of doing that on his own so then The Posse Comitatus Act, 1878 has
been enacted that restricts the federal government from utilizing the armed forces. It is stated
that Trump has made a false claim of asking for more national troops but never got it. The
law enforcement rules and regulation cannot be performed; Middle Easterners are very
dangerous people and will give assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Trump
has also falsely appealed that illegal migrants are given the luxury car and rioting over
sanctuary city laws (Thompson, Gusmano & Shinohara, 2018). In the following, and effort
has been made to discuss the behaviour of Donald Trump by implementing theories of
emotion, stress, learning, personality disorder, and group influence.
Learning Theory
Social Learning theory fits bets in Donald Trump’s behaviour, as one should learn by
associating and observing others through the process of reinforcement, where others support
beliefs and convictions. Donald Trump treats people as if they were personal slaves and
thereby negative role model for the youth. It disarms and interrupt the behaviour and will not
be tolerated or condoned in a society. Trump has been criticized for his behaviour towards
women, his hatred and action directed towards disabled people and minority groups (Akers &
Jennings, 2015).
It is predicted that Trump has made various comments about Muslims and immigrants
entering the United States “A complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States until our nation’s agents can figure out what is going on”. He has made demanding,
false statements to citizens and offensive comments to women. His personality proves that he
is recognized to boost himself and his accomplishments constantly while failing and ignoring
to see the losses. It is stated that when circumstances are not successful for him then he
moves on to a better opportunity and does not work upon negative aspects of the condition.
Trump invest in gaining trust from citizens of the country as he desires more power, authority

Psychology 2
to manipulate them, which generates this “need for power and achievement” (Cochran,
Maskaly, Jones & Sellers, 2017).
This theory explains the behaviour of Trump and just act the way he does as he wants
to, but because of the disposition of personality. He denies setback and his failures do not
reach his conscious mind. It is evident that all individuals need political and social interaction
in their life. He always likes to defy the status quo, he does not care about pleasing others and
is quick about taking decisions. Trump will not take advice from people and extremely
popular among Republican voters who are attracted to his combination of nativism, populism,
and anti-elite resentment. He has shown that youths are being influenced by false hopes and
leading them to believe that accept such conditions, which are more likely to behave more
aggressively in future conditions (Green & Castro, 2017).
Theory of Emotion
The theory of emotion, which best applies to the behaviour of Donald Trump is The
James-Lange theory of Emotion. It suggests that emotions occur because of physiological
reaction to events. This theory interprets that when you see an external stimulus leads to a
physiological reaction and your emotional response is relying upon interpreting those
physical reactions. In other words, this theory interprets that individual have a physiological
reaction to environmental stimuli and their execution of that physical reaction then leads to
emotional experience. They believed that it is possible to visualize experiencing an emotion
such as anger or fear, which would be a flat facsimile of the real feeling. The physical
reaction needs to be present in order to actually experience the real emotion (Kordsachia,
Labuschagne & Stout, 2017).
There is no doubt that Donald Trump has hurt many emotions and said many things
that would have been political suicide for any other Republican citizens. It is seen that every
time he made one of these shocking statements and because of that political analysts have
examined that they have to lose support because of it (Lacasse, 2017). Donald Trump has just
two weeks earlier to the mid-term elections has addressed the citizens of the United States
and keep up all the empty promises and false statements. He has played with the citizens of
the country and refers to all attempts by suspected or known terrorists to enter the country,
not through a caravan at the southern border. Donald Trump faces objection within his own
party because of mid-term elections (Laird & Lacasse, 2014). Many of the people are facing

Psychology 3
and fighting with the problems of corruption, drugs, and poverty. It is seen that he had not
made any specific plans to resolve the issue and just made false statements to make them
realize that they are helping them to deal with the issue. They just made fool of the common
people who think that trump raises the level of the country in dealing with the issue of
homosexuality, terrorism, and corruption (Sawyer, 2017).
Personality Disorder
It has been said that Donald Trump is suffering from Narcissistic Personality
Disorder, which is a clinical diagnosis and personal dimension. It has been said by
professional psychotherapists and psychiatrists that he has a psychiatric disorder on the
principle that one cannot do a diagnosis without visiting the office. As, most narcissists are
relatively unlikely to identify that they have a disorder and to plan an appointment
(Sedikides, Ntoumanis & Sheldon, 2018). According to DSM-5, Donald Trump with
Narcissistic Personality Disorder are facing symptoms that could affect their behaviour: -
 Grandiosity with beliefs of superior treatment by other individual and trump follow
the same.
 Fixated on fantasies of intelligence, attractiveness, success, and power, etc., which
Trump had the most as because of that only he wants to gain citizens trust to win mid-
term elections.
 Self-perception of being superior, admiring, unique, always been a well-known
personality and linked with high-status individual and organization.
 Donald Trump needs continuous admiration from other people and maintains a
dignity of power as well as politics (McNally, 2018).
 He attains a sense of entitlement to get obedience and special treatment from other
people, which defines their behavior.
 Donald Trump always exploits others, make false hopes in the mind of people,
demoralize them to achieve a personal advantage.
 He is unwilling to understand and share the feeling, needs, preferences, and wishes of
others people.
 Donald Trump is a powerful and notorious businessman with his substantial wealth
and he has always remained in the controversy because of his arrogant behavior.
 He is intensely jealous of other people and it is a conviction that these people are
equally jealous and hatred with him (O'Reilly III, Doerr & Chatman, 2018).

Psychology 4
 Donald Trump has an arrogant, assertive, pompous, and energetic personality, which
stay him apart from other people, who do not understand any other people emotion
instead of him (Ashcroft, 2016).
These symptoms are severe enough to harm the ability of Trump to maintain and
develop a meaningful relationship with others and also decrease the ability to function at
work. The key question to take concern is despite this, psychiatric disorder, Trump can
communicate well enough to the people to be an effective and efficient leader of the world.
This is the reason because they do not feel to maintain consensus and screened out by
democratic systems of government (Klotz & Neubaum, 2016).
Social Psychological phenomenon
Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America is a disgrace to his
country on various levels. It is said that not only his policies and politics from tax-cuts,
cutting-off assistance to other people, nuclear weapons, and climate change to Palestine are
terribly wrong-headed. It is not just his idea of leadership is irresponsible, divisive, and
confrontational but it is that trump always deals people with blatant racism, chauvinism, and
misogyny (Pettigrew, 2017). It can be stated that the first move should be put by Trump only
as he has given trouble to many people so he needs to connect with the citizens very closely
and maintain a healthy and prosperous relationship with others. Then, others should also
accept this wholeheartedly and collaborate with him to reduce the gap and issues regarding
racism, homosexuality, and poverty (Bobo, 2017).
The social psychological phenomenon is termed as authorities and power should be
strictly followed by the president himself and by others as they are in the best position to
identify what is good for the society and country. It describes a predisposition of people
needs and preferences for the social hierarchy of groups over lower-status groups. In the
United States, Republicans start averaging higher on authoritarianism than Democrats. It is
stated that people who maintain a high score in social orientation are progressively tough-
minded, dominant, disagreeable, and driven towards attaining power cannot achieve self-
respect and self-indulgence. However, Trump should motivate himself and others in
contributing towards moving into the right direction and give importance to every people
(Inglehart & Norris, 2016).

Psychology 5
Conclusion
Their action was a result of nature not nurture, it can be stated as a mixture of both,
which governs the force behind the behaviour of Donald Trump. As, there is no need for
disagreement about the energetic, assertive, and dominant personality, which is influenced by
others. There are limitations to every theory, as these specific theories of emotion,
personality disorder, learning, and social psychology have been proven greatly successful in
describing the behaviour of Donald Trump. The president during campaign addresses citizens
of United States and told that Democrats would harm our people businesses and take the
nation into “chaos” and “poverty”. Mr. Trump has claimed against Democrats that they are
raising our taxes, destroy our businesses and farms. The only reason to do that is to vote-out
democrat by such actions and preserve its own seat. He then addresses forward to put plans to
promote ethanol, boost Republicans, reduces fuel and concerns regarding pollution. These are
the false claims given by them. So, Trump used to understand the matter of concerns to
encourage and motivate others so as to achieve success and growth in the country.

Psychology 6
References
Akers, R. L., & Jennings, W. G. (2015). Social learning theory. The Handbook of
Criminological Theory, 4, 230
Ashcroft, A. (2016). Donald Trump: Narcissist, Psychopath or Representative of the
People?. Psychotherapy and Politics International, 14(3), 217-222
Bobo, L. D. (2017). Racism in Trump's America: reflections on culture, sociology, and the
2016 US presidential election. The British journal of sociology, 68, 85-104
Cochran, J. K., Maskaly, J., Jones, S., & Sellers, C. S. (2017). Using structural equations to
model Akers’ social learning theory with data on intimate partner violence. Crime &
Delinquency, 63(1), 39-60
Green, T. L., & Castro, A. (2017). Doing counterwork in the age of a counterfeit president:
resisting a Trump–DeVos education agenda. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education, 30(10), 912-919
Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-
nots and cultural backlash, 34(4), 67-89
Klotz, A. C., & Neubaum, D. O. (2016). Article Commentary: Research on the Dark Side of
Personality Traits in Entrepreneurship: Observations from an Organizational Behavior
Perspective. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(1), 7-17
Kordsachia, C. C., Labuschagne, I., & Stout, J. C. (2017). Beyond emotion recognition
deficits: A theory guided analysis of emotion processing in Huntington’s
disease. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 73, 276-292
Lacasse, K. (2017). Going with your gut: How William James' theory of emotions brings
insights to risk perception and decision making research. New Ideas in
Psychology, 46, 1-7
Laird, J. D., & Lacasse, K. (2014). Bodily influences on emotional feelings: Accumulating
evidence and extensions of William James’s theory of emotion. Emotion Review, 6(1),
27-34
McNally, R. J. (2018). Diagnosing at a Distance: Is the Goldwater Rule Still Relevant
Today?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(1), 28-30

Psychology 7
O'Reilly III, C. A., Doerr, B., & Chatman, J. A. (2018). “See You in Court”: How CEO
narcissism increases firms' vulnerability to lawsuits. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(3),
365-378
Pettigrew, T. F. (2017). Social psychological perspectives on Trump supporters. Journal of
Social and Political Psychology, 5(1), 107-116
Sawyer, R. K. (2017). Unresolved tensions in sociocultural theory: Analogies with
contemporary sociological debates. In Introduction to Vygotsky, 67(8), 157-175
Sedikides, C., Ntoumanis, N., & Sheldon, K. M. (2018). I am the chosen one: Narcissism in
the backdrop of self‐determination theory. Journal of personality, 89(6). 121-134
Thompson, F. J., Gusmano, M. K., & Shinohara, S. (2018). Trump and the Affordable Care
Act: Congressional Repeal Efforts, Executive Federalism, and Program
Durability. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 27(3), 278-291