What Trump getting booed can teach us about this COVID moment

At a rally in Alabama this weekend, former President Donald Trump was booed by supporters for forcefully endorsing vaccination against COVID-19. The spectacle seemed to encapsulate the complexity of the nation’s current COVID moment.

“I believe totally in your freedoms. I do. You’ve got to do what you have to do,” Trump told his audience. "But I recommend: Take the vaccines. I did it – it's good."

The crowd jeered. 

The COVID crisis has taken many turns, endured several waves, and continued to divide a nation of Republicans and Democrats who have long remained in stark disagreement over the threat of the virus and what should be done to mitigate its spread. The Trump rally is a fascinating look at the dynamics of social identity and the psychology of leadership, said Dominic Packer, co-author of the forthcoming book "The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony."

Packer said when a leader builds an identity around the narrative of "us versus them," they are pressured to stay in the bounds of "us," and find it difficult to veer into the territory of "them." 

"I think the booing is super interesting," he said. "Trump is an identity leader. He's rallied a group of people who really strongly identify with him personally and with this oppositional identity to the left. ... What the booing reveals is that identity-based leadership is a double-edged sword, because people only embrace you as their leader if they think, 'you're one of us.'"

More than 624,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and cases are spiking across the nation. At the current pace, 34 Americans die of COVID-19 every hour. USA TODAY spoke with Packer about leadership, identity and what his research tells us about this pandemic chapter. 

Question: What's the difference between being an identity leader and simply being a leader?

Dominic Packer: Leadership is often defined very abstractly. A leader is someone who can influence the behavior of others, who can get other people to do things. Leaders of groups bring together a collection of people in pursuit of common goals. Whether it's defeating the Democrats or evacuating people from Afghanistan, those are all acts of leadership when you're coordinating people.

What we really focus on in the book is that a major tool leaders can use is a sense of common identity. ... Trump has been somewhat masterful at it. It really resonates with a segment of the population who he hasn't just energized around the Republican identity, but who he's energized around a personalized charismatic identity of his own. He crafted an identity around himself that appeals to a substantial number of people. Some politicians are better at it than others and it works better at different times.

Q: Why is identity-based leadership a double-edged sword?

Packer: Fundamental to being an identity leader is that you are the prototypical member of the group you're a part of. And Trump holds that position very strongly, but (the booing is) suggesting there are limits to it and that if you've defined the identity around, 'vaccines are fundamentally a leftist plot or a Democrat thing,' then even Trump gets pushback when he seems to dilute that boundary.

I think when it comes to identities, especially oppositional and very conflicting identities like we have right now politically, diluting the boundary is a sin. It's not acceptable. It's, 'vaccines are a them thing. What is he doing? He's betraying us and betraying our cause. What is he becoming a Democrat now?' That's my interpretation of why you get such a negative, emotional reaction. ... But my intuition is that if Trump was to consistently and very publicly start saying, 'everyone needs to get vaccinated,' I do think it would move the needle. I think a lot of his base would go do it. Maybe with some grumbling, but I do think they would.

Q: What is the most important thing readers need to know about this COVID moment?

Packer: It feels like people have lost hope a bit. If you compare across countries, countries that have seemed to do better throughout the pandemic are places where the leadership has really rallied people around a national identity, 'We as X country are going to fight this together.' ... The United States is particularly an outlier in just how polarized it's become. It really doesn't feel like a national thing. It really is a left/right thing and I think that's tragic.

To maintain solidarity, people need to feel, and this is what research would show, a sense of what's called collective efficacy. If we do stick together and we do this together, we will succeed, or at least we have a good chance of succeeding. And those feelings are increasingly being lost. I certainly feel it, a loss of that collective efficacy. Can we get back together again? I really hope so. 

Q: What is necessary for effective leadership around COVID?

Packer: One of the things leaders often are tempted to do, and I feel the Biden administration did this, was to claim victory before you won. Because they really want to take a positive moment and make everyone feel good. But it also then sets up false expectations and people get let down.

I feel like if we've learned nothing else from COVID, it's that we don't understand COVID, and it's a long way out. We will get through it, but it's not going to be soon. It's complicated, it's difficult, and we're going to have setbacks. And I guess I would urge leaders to be honest with people about the realities of it. We're in a war against the virus and it doesn't care about whether we feel good or not.

When leaders lead they're making assumptions about how people work, and it's one of the things we talked a lot about in the book, that some of the assumptions we intuitively make are wrong. One assumption that is often made is that in crisis or emergencies, people respond selfishly and with panic. What research shows is that in an emergency, people usually don't panic. They're often weirdly calm and people often become more altruistic and helpful. ... It would be better to freak people out so that they really understand it. They can then respond appropriately to it and they can again rally around a response to the challenge as opposed to thinking it's not so bad and then getting shocked.