This worldview is characteristic of Donald Trump. But he is far from being the only one.
A zero-sum game is a situation in which the gain of one person or group necessarily comes at the cost of a loss for another. It is a world where there is a finite amount of goods, benefits and well-being available and where the more one enjoys, the less one leaves to others. This is the opposite of the idea that there can be win-win arrangements.
The former and future American president appears to be the perfect example of such a world view. He for whom international trade is only good based on what the United States sells abroad and never on what it buys. He for whom immigration necessarily takes something away from those who are already in the United States. He who presents himself as the champion of the people against the Washington elites. He who describes his political opponents as traitors to the nation. He for whom the world pits the United States against China and for whom treaties and international forums are only obstacles that prevent his country from exercising its full powers. He who only seems to respect “the winners”, the strong men and the celebrities and have only contempt for “the losers”, the conciliators and the anonymous.
This way of looking at life in general, or certain issues in particular, is very common, found a researcher from the Stanford University business school and a psychology professor from the University of British Columbia ( UBC) in a recent study of 10,000 subjects in six countries. It generally corresponds to the conception we have of success in business. It is found among these men who feel threatened when their partners climb the professional ladder. It was very present, during the COVID-19 pandemic, among those who were hostile to the health rules imposed in the name of the common good.
It could be one of the factors explaining the growing political divide in several countries, other experts say. This idea that citizens are holed up in camps increasingly distant from each other is not only observed in the United States, South Korea, France or Israel, reported the Pew Research Center following a survey conducted in 19 countries. The proportion of Canadians who said there was deep opposition between supporters of their different political parties jumped from 44% to 66% in the wake of the pandemic.
Young people and the left
Despite what the Donald Trump case might suggest, the conception of life and the world as a zero-sum game is not unique to old right-wing conservatives. On the contrary, a group of economists from Harvard University, UBC and the London School of Economics found in a recent study. Indeed, if it is rather well distributed within the population, it appears a little more frequent, particularly among young people and among supporters of greater state interventionism, but also among people more hostile to immigration, they said. -they observed after a large survey conducted in the United States and after examining data on 72 countries taken from the ambitious Global Values Survey (World Values Survey).
This worldview would be strongly linked to the life course of individuals and their loved ones. Those who, unlike many young people today, grew up in an era of strong economic growth and greater opportunities to climb the socio-economic ladder would thus be more inclined to believe that the gains of some need not result in losers elsewhere. .
The vision of a zero-sum game would also be less present among immigrants in general and, to a lesser extent, among their children and grandchildren, or those who come into close contact with them. We would also find it a little less in the middle class than in poorer or richer households. And, in the United States, a little less among Republican supporters than Democrats. The latter’s call for greater state interventionism – whether to redistribute wealth or to directly help disadvantaged groups – would thus stem, in part at least, from the feeling that the world is a pie of which the most The strong will only leave others with crumbs if governments do not force a more equitable sharing.
The presence or absence of this way of seeing the world helps explain certain anomalies, note the authors of this latest study. Why, for example, does the white, rural and older American population not support more government interventions that would benefit them? This also gives an idea of why Democrats may be hostile to immigration or have voted for Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders before switching to the Trump camp.
Scuttling
The sad thing is that individuals who view life most strongly through the prism of a zero-sum game may go so far as to sabotage opportunities offered to them to cooperate with others and which would have enhanced their economic fate and their general well-being, say our two other experts from Stanford University and UBC.
Knowing how to recognize and name this phenomenon should already help to better understand the situation when it arises in our interpersonal relationships, as well as at the national level, they continue. As this vision is often not linked to the situation directly in question, but to a general conception of life, it is not impossible to believe that one can, on occasion, understand oneself, or convince the other side, that a win-win solution is possible in certain circumstances, they say.
And in cases like the one with Donald Trump and international trade, where it might be wasted effort to try to get him to change his point of view, this at least allows us to better understand his way of thinking and to look for a way to present things to him in such a way that he feels like the big winner in the deal.
