Understanding the psychological nature and mechanisms of political trust

Abstract

Political trust is a perennially important concern and the events of the last few years have, in many ways, heightened this importance. The relevant scholarship has done much to meet this challenge but continues to struggle with definitional unclarities and an inability to provide accounts that consistently operate as expected. The current research seeks to test the potential of a classic model of trust from the organizational sciences that makes specific arguments regarding the psychological nature and mechanisms of the construct in helping to address these concerns. Using data from a national convenience sample, we provide preliminary evidence which suggests that measures and models addressing this theoretical account of psychological trust form unidimensional and reliable measures that may more precisely explain the process of political trust and outperform current measures in predicting relevant correlates. We conclude by discussing the implications and limitations of our work and, in so doing, lay a foundation for a new research agenda for political trust.

Fig 1. Study hypotheses.

Unidirectional arrows indicate regression paths.

Fig 2. Significant relationships within the saturated structural equation model.

Solid lines indicated significant hypothesized effects. Hashed lines indicate significant non-hypothesized effects. Demographic variables were included in the model (see Table 4) but are suppressed for readability.