A Personality Explanation for the Presidential Immunity Ruling

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A recent decision by the six conservative-leaning justices of the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has given U.S. presidents, in a decision related to the actions of Donald Trump, immunity for many “official” behaviors. It was a shocking decision to many, including some of their fellow conservative jurists (Moran, 2024). The implications are numerous and difficult to overstate.

So why did the justices do it?

It's easy to suggest it was entirely due to the justices’ conservative biases. However, it’s such obvious-seeming inferences that may put us at greatest risk of committing the fundamental attribution error (FAE), in which we jump to conclusions and overlook the particular circumstances (Stalder, 2018a). But even if conservative leanings drove the decision, what exactly is it about being politically conservative that would lead the justices to agree to place a president above the law?

One way to avoid bias in judging a legal decision, or any behavior, is to slow down and try to consider all the possible explanations (Stalder, 2018a, 2018b):

1. The ruling is a fair reading of the Constitution, part of what Chief Justice John Roberts has referred to as calling “balls and strikes.”
2. The justices wanted to protect Trump from his numerous indictments.
3. Even if the justices thought Trump had behaved unlawfully, they wanted to protect future presidents against unfair prosecutions, something acknowledged as a benefit even by some critics of the decision (French, 2024).
4. The justices receive some kind of benefit or reinforcement from those helped by the rulings. There’s no documented quid pro quo, but several media reports have suggested potential conflicts of interest for some justices (Barnes, 2023). Such situations can influence decision makers without them consciously realizing it.
5. Conservatives tend to score higher on a number of traits that reflect or contribute to a desire for autocratic leadership. These traits can develop from upbringing or exposure to conservative role models or readings, but they can also possibly arise from neurological or genetic differences (Denworth, 2020; Kleppesto et al., 2024).

These are not the only possible explanations, and they are not mutually exclusive: There can be a combination of causes. For example, a desire to protect Trump can arise from a conservative disposition known as group-centrism in which members of a group feel loyalty toward their leader (Kruglanski et al., 2006). Not all conservatives score high on group-centrism, and liberals can feel it, too. But on average, research finds that liberals tend to be less group-centric than conservatives (Jost, 2017; Stalder, 2009), as perhaps illustrated by the recent widespread calls for President Biden to exit the presidential race from within his own party.

A Role for Situation and Traits

Now that we’ve (briefly) considered several possible causes, to try to offset the fundamental attribution error, let’s focus on the justices’ potential traits. Although overlooking the situation is a common bias, so too is it biased to ignore personal factors and to rationalize or make excuses for someone’s bad behavior out of loyalty to them, their party, or the institution in which they work. Most behaviors are caused by a combination of personal and situational factors (Stalder, 2018a).

A trait historically associated with political conservatism is right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) (Altemeyer, 1998), which on its face could help explain the ruling. Although the full explanation is unlikely to be this simple, it’s not difficult to argue that making a decision to give presidents this “superpower” (Wolf, 2024) was an autocratic thing to do.

More recent investigations suggest that political conservativism and RWA are complex constructs influenced by multiple situational and personal variables, including personal needs and motives. Specifically, people may adopt conservative or authoritarian ideologies to satisfy “needs for order, structure, and closure” and to avoid feelings of “uncertainty and threat” (Jost et al., 2003a, 2003b). Some liberals can also exhibit need-based authoritarianism, though that is a less-defined or less-agreed-upon construct (Costello et al., 2022).

Needs for Certainty, Order, and Structure

In general, it’s uncomfortable to be uncertain; people like things to be predictable and orderly. Multiple personality scales capture a person’s proclivity toward these likes, and conservatives typically score higher on all of them. In turn, these needs may engender politically conservative and autocratic ideologies (De keersmaecker et al., 2017; Jost, 2017; Pierro at al., 2003).

These needs also predict more simplistic ways of thinking and a greater risk of certain reasoning biases, including primacy effects, confirmation bias, and cherry-picking (Dolinski, 2016; Hart et al., 2012; Webster and Kruglanski, 1994), which some have argued are evident in some of the conservative justices’ written decisions of the last few years (Chayes, 2024; Larsen, 2022).

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One might think that highly intelligent individuals, like the justices, could override instinctive needs in pursuit of objectivity. However, individuals with intelligence alone are not only not immune to some biases but may actually be more prone to some, including confirmation bias and an inability to recognize unconscious influences on their own decisions (Krockow, 2019; West et al., 2012).

In Sum

We cannot know for sure why the justices made their decision on presidential immunity. But spending some time trying to explain their behavior can be therapeutic for those who see an injustice in it or who are concerned about the darker potential consequences. In general, open-mindedly thinking through the potential causes of a negative event can minimize bias, reduce negative emotions, and suggest ways to prevent similar events in the future.

In this case, if conservative personality traits played a role and we see the outcome as negative, we'd need to reduce the proportion of conservative justices or, less obviously, find a non-autocratic way as a society to address typical conservatives’ greater existential needs. It seems impossible right now to unify the two parties, but somehow softening the us-versus-them mentality closer to just “us” might help satisfy those needs without turning to autocracy.

In the meantime, thinking of the justices as erring humans who are (unknowingly) trying to satisfy their understandable psychological needs may reduce feelings of hostility toward individual justices, while still allowing for anger or despair over the outcome, which might make discussions of SCOTUS reforms more productive.