The Costly Signaling Theory of Donald Trump

Why liberals hating Trump helped make him popular.

There is no single factor that can explain the widespread and enthusiastic support for Donald Trump. Even if policy preferences are not the primary reason for Trump’s popularity, his anti-wokeness, protectionism, aggressive foreign policy, and “America first” stance have obviously influenced voters. Still, I’m not convinced that policy preferences go very far in explaining the unique appeal of Donald Trump. Trump is unique because of how resilient his popularity is in the face of scandals that would have ruined any other politician. His apparent flaws are well documented. He is a habitual liar, a serial cheater, doesn’t pay his bills, has committed fraud (or engaged in otherwise shady business practices) several times, and attempted to overturn the results of an election with precisely zero evidence of widespread voter fraud. His supporters may deny some of these claims, but that’s only because they are afflicted with a severe mental illness called political partisanship. Fortunately for me, I remain totally objective through my contempt for both major political parties.

My point is that similar scandals would have ruined any other politician. If anything, Trump’s scandals have made him more popular. This fact requires an explanation. I’ve been scratching my head about Trump’s popularity for the last eight years. Regardless of my disdain for his Democratic opponents, Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and lack of integrity in general are reason enough to dislike him. I can empathize with people who held their nose and voted for Trump as the perceived lesser of two evils, but I still find it a little baffling that so many people genuinely and enthusiastically like the guy.

After eight years of head scratching, I now have a working hypothesis. I’m sure my theory can’t explain everything about Trump’s appeal, but I do think it can help to explain why he’s so scandal-proof. My theory is that Trump is uniquely appealing because, among Republican political candidates, support for Donald Trump is uniquely capable of acting as a costly signal of loyalty to the Republican moral tribe. I’ll unpack exactly what that means below. This would mean that Trump is appealing not despite his scandals, but at least in part because of them. Those scandals make him easy to hate, and the fact that he is so hated allows him to play a special role that no other Republican politician can play.

Openly supporting Donald Trump makes mainstream liberals very skeptical of you, if not outright hostile, and that hostility imposes a real cost on Trump supporters. Parents have been disowned over Trump and families have been divided. People have been ostracized at their work. It’s not that uncommon for liberals to damage the property of Trump supporters because of a bumper sticker or yard sign. People have been accosted in the street and on airplanes for wearing Trump merchandise. Liberals are hostile towards Trump supporters in a way that hasn’t been true of other politicians, even divisive Republicans like George W. Bush. My claim is that the social cost of supporting Trump means that doing so can act as a costly signal of loyalty to the Republican moral tribe. Somewhat ironically, this means that Trump’s popularity is due in part to the fact that he and his supporters are so hated by the liberal-left. Trump’s unique role as a symbol of loyalty can explain why his popularity is so resilient in the face of scandals that would ruin any other politician.

Trump once said that he could stand in the middle of 5^th avenue and shoot someone without losing voters. I think he’s pretty much right about that. Any explanation of the unique appeal of Donald Trump needs to explain why his supporters are so loyal. The costly signaling theory can do that. In order to unpack this theory, I first need to discuss the concept of costly signaling within evolutionary biology.

Costly Signaling Theory

Costly signaling theory is an idea in evolutionary biology that explains why organisms sometimes display traits or behaviors that seem extravagant, wasteful, or risky. A signal is something an organism does or shows to convey information. A peacock’s tail, a lion’s roar, or a human publicly donating to charity can all be signals. A costly signal is one that takes a lot of energy, resources, or comes with risks. It turns out that extravagant, wasteful, risky signals can serve an important purpose in communication precisely because they are costly.

Some examples of costly signals are:

• A peacock’s tail.

  • Signal: Health, developmental stability, genetic quality.

  • Cost: Requires energy to grow and maintain in addition to making the peacock more visible to predators.

• A deer’s antlers.

  • Signal: Fighting formidability, health, age.

  • Cost: They are heavy and require nutrients to develop.

• Some bird’s songs.

  • Signal: Health, genetic quality.

  • Cost: Requires significant energy and cognitive effort, in addition to making the bird more vulnerable to predators.

• In humans, showing off wealth (e.g., driving an expensive car), skill (e.g., running a marathon), or commitment to one’s religious beliefs (e.g., vows of chastity or silence) can also be a form of costly signaling.

The reason why organisms use costly signals instead of cheap signals is that costly signals are hard to fake. Only those who are genuinely strong, healthy, high-quality, or committed can afford to engage in costly signaling. If a signal was cheap or easy, everyone could fake it, and it wouldn’t be a reliable way to communicate. Because they are hard to fake, costly signals can be reliable indicators of traits like good genes, strength, social status, wealth, and loyalty to a person or cause.

Here we are mainly considered with costly signals of loyalty to a group. By engaging in risky, burdensome, or otherwise costly behavior, individuals can signal their commitment to a group or cause. These kinds of costly signals allow the group to eliminate free-riders, enhance mutual trust, and facilitate effective cooperation (Potz, 2023). For most of human history, costly signals of loyalty took the form of religious displays. Many religious practices — fasting, praying for hours, undertaking pilgrimages, or tithing a significant portion of income — require significant investment and can therefore serve as honest signals of devotion. Someone who doesn’t truly believe or isn’t committed to the group is unlikely to endure these costs, so these behaviors act as a way to filter out insincere participants.

The RINO Problem

Ever since I’ve been paying attention, a certain faction of the Republican party has been concerned with weeding out RINOs, or “Republicans in Name Only”, who speak to their constituents one way on the campaign trail, but behave differently once they are actually in power. RINO congressmen depict themselves as being more socially conservative than they actually are in order to gain votes from the Republican base, but then fail to vote in the expected way once they are actually in congress.

There is no equivalent of the RINO on the left. Matthew Continetti, who recently published a history of the American Right, attributes this to the fact that Democrats are united by shared material concerns rather than shared values:

There is an interesting asymmetry between the Republican and Democratic parties’ willingness to ostracize members of their own party, Continetti noted. Though there are certainly divides within the Democratic ranks… there is still no DINO alternative to RINO on the left. Continetti attributes this to the fact that the Democratic Party is made up of a diverse coalition of groups united around material concerns. This stands in contrast to the Republican Party whose focus on values creates the potential for members to lose standing on ideological grounds, Continetti said. (quoted from here)

The RINO phenomenon is indicative of a split within the Republican party between traditional conservatives who make up the “elite” and populist conservatives who make up the base. The elite are typically more moderate on social issues like abortion, immigration, and gun control than the base. These moderate positions help Republicans win general elections (because the general population is much more moderate than the Republican base), but can hurt Republican politicians who are trying to win primaries. In order to drum up support from the base, Republican politicians may pretend to be more socially conservative than they actually are, leading to the RINO accusation.

The frustration of social conservatives with RINO politicians has been a theme within the Republican party since the early 90s, in large part because those with the capital and temperament to successfully run for office often have values that are different from the people they rely on to vote them in (see

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for a discussion of elite human capital vs. low human capital). Because supporting Trump can act as a costly signal of commitment to socially conservative principles, Trump provides a solution to the RINO problem.

Trump Support as Costly Signal

Unwavering support for Trump makes for a simple litmus test which allows Republicans to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is because the Republican base has intuitively recognized that Trump support acts as a costly signal of loyalty. Supporting Trump is costly in several ways:

1. Supporting Trump can lead to conflicts with friends, family, or colleagues who oppose him.

2. In progressive or politically neutral environments, openly supporting Trump can result in ostracism, professional challenges, and a general loss of social status.

3. Supporting Trump may expose conservatives to accusations of hypocrisy, such as prioritizing party loyalty over previously held principles (e.g., sexual propriety, integrity, free trade).

Outside of the Republican bubble, supporting Trump will probably result in being looked down upon by potential colleagues, dates, friends, and family. The willingness to face these consequences demonstrates commitment to the cause, and therefore can act as a costly signal.

While modern people might perceive a sharp demarcation between religion and politics, most of our ancestors would have seen no such distinction. The preferred king, chief, or leader would have been ordained by God (or the gods, spirits, etc.), political regimes were intimately tied up with religious ideals, and there was no separation of church and state. Although most research on costly signals of loyalty focuses on religion, modern political coalitions face the same coordination problems that ancient religious groups did and the benefits of costly signaling would apply to politics in much the same way as religion. Political coalitions, like religious ones, need to know who is trustworthy and who is not. They need to know who will remain loyal in the face of hardships and who might defect to their enemies. The Republican frustration with RINO politicians is just one example of how these problems manifest in modern politics.

Since people have obvious incentives to lie about their loyalty or trustworthiness, political coalitions can benefit from costly signals. In particular, costly signals can help political coalitions solve the two related problems of coordinating their efforts and policing defectors.

Trump helps Republicans solve both of these problems because openly supporting Trump is a hard-to-fake symbol of commitment to socially conservative values. It is much easier for Republican politicians to stretch the truth about their values than it is for them to stretch the truth about their allegiance to Trump. Even if they lie about how much they support Trump, they still must deal with the costs. This means that Trump can allow socially conservative Republicans to coordinate their efforts even when there is ideological disagreement. If a candidate endorses Trump and has been endorsed by Trump, just vote for them.

In this way, Trump provides a solution to the long-standing RINO problem within the Republican party. Nowadays, the term RINO has taken on a very different meaning than it had during the tea party era. Instead of being directed at Republicans who vote the wrong way about abortion, gun control, immigration, etc., the term is directed at anyone who exhibits insufficient loyalty and deference to Donald Trump. For example, congressman Russell Bowers was labeled a RINO (and subsequently lost the Republican primary) despite his conservative voting record because he refused to use his power as Arizona House Speaker to challenge Biden’s 2020 win. In other words, Bowers was labelled a RINO, along with other Republicans, because he didn’t go along with the narrative that the election was stolen. Trump and his supporters also labeled Republican state election officials RINOs when they (rightly) accepted the results of the 2020 election.

Liz Cheney, who voted with Trump 93% of the time, was also slapped with the RINO label for being insufficiently deferent to Trump, as were Brian Kemp and former Attorney General William Barr. As Matthew Continetti put it:

[The RINO acronym] refers to what holds the Republican party together today, that’s Donald Trump, the person. A RINO is someone who doesn’t stand behind Trump and his America first agenda. (Matthew Continetti)

The new standard of loyalty to the Republican party is not one’s voting record, but one’s deference to Donald Trump. The Republican base has purged the party of anyone who values anything over loyalty to Trump, and this purge has included plenty of people with impeccable conservative records, like Russell Bowers.

Evangelicals and Trump

Whatever you think about Trump, his behavior is not exactly in alignment with traditional Christian values. The evangelical Christians I grew up around would be pretty offended and judgmental about any normal person who had multiple public affairs and talked about his sexual escapades openly (e.g., “grab em by the pussy”). Trump’s popularity among evangelicals is therefore a little puzzling. The costly signaling theory may help to explain why evangelicals are so fond of Trump.

Statistically, there isn’t a huge difference between being a White evangelical protestant and being socially conservative in the United States. The overlap between the two is enormous. For example, 73% of white evangelical Protestants thought abortion should be illegal in all/most cases, while 86% of religiously unaffiliated Americans thought it should be legal in all/most cases.

The fact that evangelical Christianity and social conservatism are so related can help to explain why Trump is popular among evangelicals despite his less-than-Christ-like track record. I won’t spend too much time on this point, but it’s likely that certain kinds of religious beliefs (e.g., more conservative forms of religion) partially function as a signal of socially conservative values. Since my claim is that Trump support also functions as a signal of socially conservative values, this helps to explain the overlap between evangelical Christianity and Trump support.

Conclusion

I’m sure this theory can’t explain everything about Trump’s appeal. For example, it doesn’t explain why non-Republicans, including people who voted for Obama, ended up voting for Trump in 2016. Part of Trump’s appeal for these kinds of voters seems to be that he was a political outsider who was critical of the establishment.

The costly signaling theory does, however, help to explain why Trump’s supporters have been loyal through scandals that would have destroyed the career of any other politician. Because of these scandals, the liberal-left really hates Trump, and that means supporting Trump causes people to lose status in the eyes of about half of the country. Republicans intuitively pick up on the fact that supporting Trump is socially costly, and this allows them to use Trump support as an easy litmus test for determining whether someone is “in” or “out”. The assassination attempt only enhanced Trump’s symbolic status.