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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Sometimes someone will say: "I explicitly do not support X. I do support some things related to X", and then the response is "That guy's an X supporter!" I've seen this a lot with discussions around racism/trump, on both sides of the political spectrum. What's going on under...
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
this? It seems like people are assuming that lots of people are actually (for example) trump supporters, know they're trump supporters, and are actively attempting to hide it from people, and 'giving it away' through other ideological hints.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
In this world, ideological hints are equivalent to proof of actual support of the thing. What's going on here? Are there any studies on this? What personality types are more likely to do this? Is there any evolutionary benefit for this? Are hints ever reliable in this way?
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Engel
@OswaldAnalytics
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
This is a damn good question. Seems related to attribution theory and in particular correspondent inference theory but those apply to the observer and not the actual target who is singling. But mix that with diversity research on group identification and may get somewhere.
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Kevin
@SpicyHeck
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I suspect that most of this is fallacious "magical thinking" on the part of the listener, imagining that they know what the speaker secretly believes despite or because of what the speaker actually says.
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LIGMA MALE
@ngbrman
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
When people really hate something, they think it is not enough to not support it... if you don't say out loud how much you hate it, you aren't moral enough
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Robby Grossman
@freerobby
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
When two independent variables are highly correlated, a lot of people intuitively mistake them for dependent variables. I suspect your example is a case of this; people are mixing up "I support X because of Y" with "I support X in spite of Y."