James' World 2

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A few years ago I was hired to help revise a psychology textbook to make it more engaging for Gen Z. I’m a millennial, but my younger brother is Gen Z (“digital natives” born between 1997 and 2012), and our perceptions of American life differ—sometimes significantly.

To help with my revisions, I read iGen by psychologist Jean Twenge. The book’s central hypothesis is that Gen Z is uniquely and acutely concerned with tolerance, diversity, and social justice, more so than any American generation before.

But as with every generation, there are outliers. And these outliers can surprise us and teach us what makes the subgroups of a generation tick.

As a social psychologist who studies the interplay between societal structures and individual psychology, I have seen that relationship come into focus during this presidential election. I’ve followed exit polls closely, watching for psychological “surprises” in policy trends—places where behavioral expectations for individuals and groups (based on their psychology, history, and sociodemographic orientations) diverge from what actually unfolds. What I’ve seen in the voting trends of Gen Z is something politicos need to pay attention to as the next generation reaches voting age: the young white male vote is skewing conservative, in part because of how society defines and sets expectations around masculinity.

Gen Z, as a bloc, should have voted blue. Democrats, after all, claim to be the party of progress, especially when compared with the present iteration of the Republican Party, and Twenge argues that Gen Z individuals are “obsessed with safety, focused on tolerance, and have no patience for inequality.” Kamala Harris centered herself on a key progressive issue—salvaging women’s right to

abortion—whereas Donald Trump’ campaign was full of sexist remarks and a promise to roll back protections for transgender students in schools. And while Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz was hailed as a progressive champion, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance espoused regressive and demeaning views about women’s place in American society. All in all, if it’s true that Gen Zers are defined by their progressive views on sociopolitical issues, they should have voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic ticket. The Harris-Walz campaign was certainly counting on it.

And they did, sort of. Fifty-four percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 voted for Harris and Walz. This is nothing new: Young people skew blue. Yet, if what Twenge and others say is true, and this group is uniquely concerned with social justice, this number should have been higher. I was certain that Gen Zers—regardless of their gender, educational attainment, or geographic location—would overwhelmingly vote for Harris. But they didn’t. Democrats lost a lot of footing with young voters, despite nearly every historically marginalized group, especially LGBTQ+ youth, leaning left.

Who, then, didn’t vote as expected? Young Gen Z white men—mainly those without college degrees—voted overwhelmingly for Trump (67 percent), which is eerily similar to their just-older millennial peers (also 67 percent). By comparison, young white working class Gen Z women were more likely to vote blue (43 percent) than their just-older millennial peers (34 percent).

As a researcher who studies identity, behavior, and aggression among young men, these patterns set off alarm bells for me.

But the answer isn’t as simple as “toxic masculinity.” What really led white, working class Gen Z men to align themselves with Trump—a candidate characterized by his anger, aggression, hatefulness, hegemony, and specific brand of manhood? Based on research spanning decades, including my own, the answer relates to three core ideas of social psychology: conformity, motivation, and threat.

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