Since President Donald Trump took office a few weeks ago, the administration’s enthusiastic efforts, including withdrawing from global agreements and cutting down federal employment and funding cuts, have piqued many people. Ta. However, others seem to enjoy the confusion. According to political scientists, at least some of this chaos-seeking behavior can be intricately linked to people’s sense of losing their foothold in society. And that meaning is linked to inequality and rising globalization.
“Chaos is a strategy that some people use to recognize the loss of their status,” says Kevin Arceneau, a political scientist at the University of Science in Paris, France. “Their response to that is to cause trouble as a way to turn the cart into his head and try to get their place back.”
Most people like order, Arceneaux says. However, about 15% of the US population is drawn to chaos, or “desire for a new beginning.” The destruction of order Arceneaux and his team reported in 2021. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The team came to that conclusion after developing a scale to measure people’s desire for confusion. Approximately 5,000 Americans assessed the level of agreement with statements such as “I think society should be burned to the ground” and “Get kicks when natural disasters attack foreign countries,” and “I am I just feel like I’m destroying something beautiful.”
What Arceneaux calls Chaos-seeking behaviour (5% of the roughly 5,000 Americans surveyed are eager to create mayhem for mayhem, without worrying about who will get injured in the process On the other hand, around 10% of those who surveyed the survey are chaos of desires, but they lack maliciousness, says Arceneaux. They say that society is too broken to fix it. “These people want society to start over, but they don’t want to hurt people,” says Arceneaux.
Science News Talked to Arceneaux and at this moment in global history, we understood the role that individuals who want for Chaos wanted. This interview has been compiled for length and clarity.
SN: What inspired your team to start studying chaos?
Arceneaux: It was probably early 2017. We have decided to start this research project to study misinformation. What was in the news at the time was that social media was being used to cycle through many false narratives. It was really something we were interested in studying. And we conceptualized this concept [as] “The Need for Chaos.”
We have begun to dig into academic literature on social alienation [and] Status Seeking. The idea here is that some people feel they have lost their status. And this is recognition. These don’t have to be truly poor people. They can actually be far enough apart in an absolute sense. These individuals’ reaction to that perceived loss is to try and cause trouble.
We then developed the scale and did a lot of pilot research. And what we showed A series of research These individuals clearly say that their motivation to share misinformation is to really stir up trouble and don’t care if it’s true or not.
Thankfully, it’s not a big group of people. At the same time, you don’t need a large group of people to make up for confusion.
SN: We analyzed how chaos needs correlate with specific personality traits. According to your work, what characterizes the seeker of chaos?
Arceneaux: There are two types of people that are very chaotic. A small group of people score the highest score on the scale. They want both societies to burn to the ground and destroy the beautiful things. There is another slightly larger group called “reconstructors.” They tended to say yes to the engines burning on the ground. But they don’t want maliciousness. They do not get kicks from natural disasters that strike countries or anything like that.
Chaos seekers seem to be driven by the ego. They feel as if they are not as respected as they think they should. However, the need for chaos is not a personality trait, but people seek confusion in all contexts. Instead, that is what psychologists call character adaptation. These adaptations help people respond to specific contexts. Nowadays, factors such as rising inequality and globalization make life more unstable. Therefore, people with darker personality traits may be responding by dialing chaos.
There are no groups either [of chaos-seekers] It is driven by political ideology. In 2016 and 2020, high scores on the scale did not correlate with Donald Trump’s vote. There are preliminary findings showing that those who score high on the scale in 2024 are more likely to vote for Donald Trump. I don’t know what’s changed.
SN: Your research also suggests that chaos seekers distort whites and men. Why do you think so?
Arceneaux: When I see the black people in the sample, they I’m worried about the group More with individuals than with white people. Historically, there is much more emphasis on this notion of linked fate. That means that what happens to the group affects the individual.
Between black men and black women, and it also looks like white women – if they feel their group is lost, it is negatively correlated with the need for confusion. And this seems to fit what we know from the “linked fate” literature… you are a minority in the country where you feel you’re losing. Creating chaos won’t help you. It targets you.
White men as demographics Shows the strongest correlation Between loss of status and the need for chaos. This fits our theory. It is the loss of personal status that motivates people. Caucasian man [more often] Note that they are individually losing.
sn: Can this theory shed light on the current situation in the United States?
Arceneaux: There is no paper yet. but, [political scientist] Roy Turx in Princeton [University]The survey was conducted throughout the 2024 election. It began in late July 2024 and surveyed 500 people each week until their inauguration date. I think we did a daily survey just before and after the election.
These studies included questions that measure chaos scales, loss of status, and questions about people’s perceptions of absolute states. We found that those who feel low status are more likely to need chaos. This is consistent with the theory.
Social psychology has an old literature on a concept called relative deprivation. When people think about how they do it, and when they think about it compared to others, this idea comes from them. If you’re my boss and say, “I’m going to give you a 5% salary increase,” then that’s fine, right? But then, if you find out you gave my office mate a 10% salary increase, I feel like I’m getting a mess. It’s a classic relative deprivation. What’s interesting is that people who believe they have high status also score high chaos needs. Their concerns seem to have lost its advantages.
This is what happens when you have a high level of inequality. At the bottom, it creates a broad sense of relative deprivation, loss…but it also means that very top people can be very concerned about losing those things I will. Because the alternative to inequality is to share. Think about the US Day debate. The people at the top may wonder: what does it mean to me to create a more inclusive space?
When I saw this data, I thought this was a really great explanation for why I’m married to two forces all over the world.. On the one hand, there are groups of people who feel that the deck is piling up against them. And for them, you can either try again or remove the system because that makes sense. But Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world, and Donald Trump is not poor. In Europe, many people leading populist accusations aren’t bad either. One possible thing is that these people are aware that they are benefiting and that they want to keep it up. It created a strange bed fellow.
SN: In your view, is there anything people can do to alleviate confusion?
Arceneaux: I think we have to listen to some of these people. When people say, “Look, I’m screwed,” it’s easy to dismiss.
Many people are asking, “What are these liberal democratic institutions doing for me?” What you get is that you prefer a strong leader who comes in and cleans things up. And you can see it on the left and right side. In Venezuela, when Hugo Chavez entered he was not on the right.
I think we think about this a lot from the notion that our democratic institutions are nothing wrong. But I think we need to pay a little attention to understanding why people are unhappy.
