【Discuss Section】

Talk about something often enough and Discuss Sectionthe idea can become real, especially if people around you are talking about the same thing. That, in short, gives a good indication why there had been so much chatter about the possibility of the Electoral College voting against Donald Trump on Monday, even though it was never likely to happen.

Electors voted for Trump as expected, and the letdown for Clinton supporters and Trump detractors has no doubt whipped them straight back to dismal reality. But psychologists say the good news is they're not likely to feel dismal about their situation for long, despite the many blinking lights of false hope.

SEE ALSO: People want to elect Hillary so bad, they created the biggest Change.org petition ever

Clinton fans first got an unrealistic jolt of hope from a New York Magazinearticle that offered quickly debunked evidence that voting machines in Wisconsin had been rigged for Trump. But before that "evidence" could be sufficiently swept from the public's mind, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein launched a three-state recount effort, getting millions of dollars in donations by ginning up the idea that America's electoral system was compromised. Supporters of Hillary Clinton pounced, eager to somehow thwart Trump's path to the White House.

Stein's effort barely got started before it was mostly laughed off, but Clinton supporters and Trump detractors then turned their hopes on the very, very outside shot that enough Republican electors of the Electoral College would vote against Trump despite the wishes of their state's voters. Even a team of celebrities got in on the idea in a video message aimed at GOP electors.

"Republican members of the Electoral College, this message is for you," begins Martin Sheen, who played the president of the United States on the hit TV series The West Wing. "As you know, our founding fathers built the Electoral College to safeguard the American people from the dangers of a demagogue, and to ensure that the presidency only goes to someone who is to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

The video goes on to implore electors to cast their ballots not for Clinton, but for anyone they feel is "especially competent."

And while it's always easy to poke fun at these videos of celebrities making a heartfelt political splash, they're not alone. I'm sure some of you have seen your liberal-minded friends post about the Electoral College on Facebook. In a poll taken by Politicoand Morning Consult from Dec. 15-17, respondents were informed that Clinton won the popular vote and then asked whether the United States should keep the Electoral College system in place. Only 40 percent said yes, whereas 45 percent said the Electoral College should be replaced with the popular vote. Responding to a different question, 34 percent said electors shouldn't be "bound to vote for the candidate that won their state if they have significant concerns about the candidate that won their state."

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None of this is to say all of those people were in favor of the Electoral College dumping Trump for Clinton, but all this does indicate that there was a thread of folks holding out hope that somehow, some way, Clinton (or someone other than Trump) would wind up in the White House.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

For the more diehard believers who really thought the Electoral College would shock the world, Markus Brauer, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin who researches group processes, offered a comparison to a kind of cult thinking.

"We've seen this a lot, from beliefs that members of sects can have or belief rumors that spread about vaccines and the danger of getting vaccinated," Brauer told Mashable. "The conclusion is human beings have phenomenal capacity to convince each other that things are true or likely when obviously they're not."

The good news, according to Brauer, is that the mind continues to adapt even when our outer worlds don't conform to what we had so fervently believed was going to happen.

"It's stunning how, again, how incredibly flexible our mind is, how people then seem to move on and have an explanation why that didn't happen," Brauer said. "If you predict their behavior a week before the event, you would think they cannot move on, but somehow they do."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Peter Ditto, a professor of psychology and social behavior at University of California, Irvine, compared Clinton fans' hope in the Electoral College to Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare during President Barack Obama's two terms in office.

"I don't know if they believed it was going to work, but they hoped," Ditto said.

And while the chances of an Electoral College stunner were never more than vanishingly small, Ditto said it made sense for fervent Clinton fans and Trump detractors to hope.

"This is just an absolutely natural thing that people do," he said.

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