Since the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony charges, people have marveled at the expressions of support on the part of his followers, despite their avowed religious beliefs in marriage fidelity and business ethics. Testimony in Trump’s trial revealed that he paid off a porn star before his 2016 election as president to not reveal their tryst while his wife was caring for their 4-month-old child.

Christianity is a religion that offers redemption to the penitent sinner, but Trump has not apologized for his behavior, nor has he promised to turn over a new leaf. Instead, he has stridently condemned his trial as “rigged,” the judge as “a moron,” and himself as a victim of persecution by a tainted prosecutor and his rival candidate, President Joe Biden.

In the wake of his conviction, his campaign quickly captured the news cycle by claiming he had received over $34 million in “small donations” from his supporters, signaling that the alleged miscarriage of justice he suffered had only increased his poll numbers in a close presidential race. The race remains in a dead heat, according to recent polls, but GOP officeholders and Fox News have vociferously rallied to Trump’s defense. The question is, why?

In social science there is a theory that describes what’s happening as “cognitive dissonance.”

New religious groups that form around a charismatic leader sometimes are attracted because the leader is a source of revelation about the immediate future, specifically that there will be a divine reckoning with the forces of evil that explain why a society is in a hopeless decline. Followers regard the leader as privy to information and insight that he or she alone can sense and believe — as Trump has told his MAGA movement that he alone can fix what he alone has labeled “American carnage.” The leader is charismatic, or “gifted,” with an expertise unshared by anyone else in the universe.

If the leader’s prediction about his expertise is disconfirmed by events, such as a jury verdict, the follower faces a choice: either his revelation about a reckoning is false, or the leader has been the target of the very forces of evil he has exposed as the root of the problem. If his knowledge is false, his supporters reject him. If he is a target, they redouble their belief in his revelation and authority about ultimate things.

This dilemma is cognitive dissonance, an existential tension between belief in the leader and the societal condemnation of him as a false prophet. Even when facts condemn the leader, the need to continue living and acting as if his revelation is true, overrides the trial verdict or any other actual evidence to the contrary. The “exit costs” of disbelief are often too high and demoralizing for the followers, who have found their meaning in the leader’s message of a doomed society and a divine redemption via some type of apocalyptic revival. So, instead of disbanding, the group intensifies its solidarity behind even a socially discredited leader.

In extreme cases, followers will endure persecution or death to preserve their ultimate concern about a justifiable reckoning that will overcome their enemies. Cognitive dissonance is a theory that applies to groups throughout history and in any possible culture. It appears to be a universal human response to despair and disappointment.

Another finding that explains why Trump’s religious followers redouble their support for him is the overwhelming tendency of our “obedience to authority” when we are faced with a moral choice. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram discovered in his series of experiments in the 1960s that ordinary people who were told by an authority to administer electric shocks to an unseen victim obeyed the command even when their own belief system told them it was wrong. Over two-thirds of the subjects followed the instructions. Thus, a majority of followers will discount the moral failings of an authoritative leader and override their own moral instincts.

How, then, can we expect Trump’s GOP and his MAGA followers to change their voting patterns because 12 ordinary people found him guilty of fraud?

Honolulu resident Jean E. Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is a historian and scholar of religions.