Disgust and contempt in the White House

Abstract

The election as president of the United States of an individual broadly perceived to be a threat to civil liberties has raised difficult questions about psychologists’ responsibilities for commenting on public affairs while concurrently retaining a respect for the rights of individuals to be spared undue personal scrutiny. While balancing these concerns, this paper examines a constellation of emotions that relate to self-regard maintenance in the face of interpersonal vulnerabilities. The emotions defined and discussed are disgust, contempt, shame, and humiliation. The author conjectures that Donald Trump’s relationship to this emotion constellation predicts the type of leadership he might provide as US president. His focus is on preserving elevated self-regard, and he is willing to pursue this aim through disidentification with many individuals and classes of people. This self-protective and self-elevating urge combines with Trump’s disregard for conventional morality around truthfulness and interpersonal restraint to create a readiness to disengage from the needs of large swathes of humanity.