Expressive Responding in Support of Donald Trump: An Extended Replication of Schaffner and Luks (2018)

There is considerable debate about whether survey respondents regularly engage in “expressive responding” – professing to believe something that they do not sincerely believe to show support for their in-group or hostility to an out-group. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that one study provides compelling evidence for a consequential level of expressive responding in a particular context. In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration rally there was considerable controversy about whether this inauguration crowd was the largest ever. At this time, a study was conducted which found that Donald Trump voters were more likely than Hillary Clinton voters or non-voters to indicate that an unlabeled photo of Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration rally showed more people than an unlabeled photo of Barack Obama’s 2009 presidential inauguration rally, despite the latter photo clearly showing more people. However, this study was not pre-registered, suggesting that a replication is needed to establish the robustness of this important result. In the present study, we conducted an extended replication over two years after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration rally. We found that despite this delay the original result replicated, albeit with a smaller magnitude. In addition, we extended the earlier study by testing several hypotheses about the characteristics of Republicans who selected the incorrect photo.