Our exploration of the 4D Framework uses an eclectic set of methodological techniques; Chapter 3 is an overview of the methodological core of our inquiry. We explain the key operationalizations of the 4D Framework and provide context and details for the studies that appear in multiple chapters throughout the book. We specifically describe how we measure contextual features of a discussion, such as disagreement, as well as the scales we use to measure individual dispositions, such as social anxiety. We explain the utility of psychophysiological data for our purposes and describe the research design details for the studies that use psychophysiological data. We provide details on our survey samples from which several analyses throughout the book are derived.

Hillary Clinton had a thousand reasons to be upset by the 2016 presidential election. Her book, What Happened, lists them all. In Chapter 16 (helpfully entitled Why), Clinton lays out her reasons in 120 well-crafted paragraphs. FBI director James Comey is her star performer, far outdistancing Vladimir Putin & Co. Clinton also acknowledges her own shortcomings as a candidate and recounts other popular explanations for the election’s outcome – angry blue-collar workers in the Midwest, a disorganized Democratic Party, fear of immigrants swarming the southern border, etc.1 What Happened is a conflicted book, as Clinton tries to explain “how sixty-two million people – many of whom agreed Trump was unfit for the job – could vote for a man so manifestly unqualified to be President.”2

Politics is a deadly serious business until 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Then the klieg lights shine. Donald Trump’s name is embossed in gold on his penis, declares Stormy Daniels on Jimmy Kimmel Live.1 Ivanka Trump is a “feckless cunt,” observes Samantha Bee on Full Frontal.2 Donald Trump is a “presidunce” and a “pricktator,” announces Steven Colbert on The Late Show.3 Clearly, nothing is now off-limits when it comes to presidential humor. Researchers have found that Trump was the butt of late-night jokes three times more often than Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, a ratio that seemed foreordained given Trump’s media history.4 Before running for office, after all, Trump had mugged with Duck Dynasty characters, overseen the Miss America pageant, and fired people on The Apprentice – all on national TV. What could possibly be verboten in a Trump presidency?

Although football has stood for quintessential American values – competition, sportsmanship, teamwork – and afforded prized cultural bounties, including pageantry, tradition, celebrity, etc., things have gone poorly in the Age of Trump. “Sports fans should never condone players who do not stand proud for their National Anthem or their Country,” Trump tweeted in September of 2017. “NFL should change policy,” he commanded.1 The President was referring to the mini-revolution begun by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick on August 14, 2016, when he remained seated during the anthem to protest police brutality. “People of color have been targeted by police,” Kaepernick explained, and “they are put in place by the government. So that’s something that this country has to change.”2

How did Donald John Trump become president of the United States? That question has bedeviled reporters since November of 2016. The obvious answer – that Trump received the most Electoral College votes – is inadequate for many. “Why Are Conservatives More Susceptible to Believing Lies?” queried Slate, drawing on social science research suggesting that while “finding facts and pursuing evidence and trusting science is part of liberal ideology,” conservatives place their faith in faith (and intuition) and thus are more likely to have difficulty “judging accurately what is true and what is false.” With conservatives coming “disproportionately from rural areas and small towns,” Slate reports, their “social networks remain smaller” and hence they are prone to accepting “misinformation and outright lies.”1 “Nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals plan to vote for Mr. Trump,” observed opinion writer Daniel K. Williams in August of 2016. “Are they dupes or hypocrites?”2 In providing evangelicals with at least two options, Mr. Williams was more generous than many of the nation’s scribes.

As the Trump administration entered its third year, everyone, it seemed, reviled the President. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews regularly described him as a liar and Old Europe dismissed him as a man drunk on ego. Women throughout the United States complained about his misogyny and a newly elected Representative from the Bronx labeled him a racist. Late-night comics called him malevolent and probably deranged. Donald Trump didn’t brush regularly. Everyone agreed.

Some people think that Donald Trump is crazy. Many of them live in Washington, DC. When consulting the Lexis-Nexis database of news coverage, for example, one finds 329 uses of the collocate <Trump + 25th Amendment> during the first three months of the Trump presidency. Between July 1st and September 30th, 2018, however, that same pairing jumped to 3,833 hits. “Members of Congress ‘Holding Secret Conversations about Removing Donald Trump from Office,’” blared the Independent, quoting such quotables as Bill Kristol, who declared that the chance of removing the President was “somewhere in the big middle ground between a 1 per cent and 50. It’s some per cent. It’s not nothing,” thus providing a valuable lesson in both politics and basic mathematics. The Independent also relied on Harvard’s Laurence Tribe (“invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is no fantasy but an entirely plausible tool”), gladdening the hearts of many Americans in the process.1

Donald Trump became president because some Americans felt trapped – no economic freedom, too much political correctness, a dubious future time. People in Homer, Alaska, especially felt that way in February of 2017 when a group of citizens proposed a resolution welcoming immigrants to “The Halibut Fishing Capital of the World,” a city sitting at the end of a spit on the Kenai Peninsula, making it the least accessible destination in the United States for any would-be traveler, immigrant or not. When National Public Radio producer Brian Reed asked people in Homer if they had ever encountered an undocumented immigrant, they said they had not. Chief of Police Mark Robel backed up their story.1

In politics, words are never far from the action: How to describe the upcoming legislation? How to set the tone for the party’s convention? How to address reporters when descending from Air Force One? “Word eruptions” – words about words about words – are a constant thing as a result and that was even truer when Donald Trump became president: One of his supporters, Roseanne Barr, lost her TV show after making racist allusions about an Obama staffer; Melania Trump wore a coat declaring “I really don’t care. Do U?” which also caused a stir; comedian Michelle Wolf prayed that White House staffer Kellyanne Conway would be hit by a tree and also described Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as “an Uncle Tom for white women”; Robert De Niro went on a rant against Trump at the Tony Awards; and Peter Fonda imagined ripping “Barron Trump from his mother” and putting him in a “cage with pedophiles.”1 Cruel words, incessant words, ineluctably political words.