Party over pandemic: Polarized trust in political leaders and experts explains public support for COVID-19 policies
Party over pandemic: Polarized trust in political leaders and experts explains public support for COVID-19 policies
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DOI：
10.1177/13684302221118534
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发表时间：
2023-10-01
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
Van Boven, Leaf
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cole, Jennifer C.;Flores, Alexandra;Van Boven, Leaf
两项实验检验了公众对COVID-19政策的支持两极分化，这是由于人们对政治领导人和无党派专家（缺乏）信任。在美国（实验1，N = 1802）和英国（实验2，N = 1825）的不同样本中，参与者评估了由内团体政治领导人、外团体政治领导人、无党派专家或美国的两党政治领导人提出的COVID-19政策。在2020年4月进行这项研究时，COVID-19是一种不熟悉的共同威胁。因此，理论上有理由认为，对新冠政策的态度可能没有政治两极化。然而，我们的研究结果表明，即使在大流行的相对早期，人们也更支持群体内政治领导人的政策，而不是群体外领导人的政策，这扩展了之前关于人们如何将政策立场与自己政党的政治精英保持一致的研究。人们也更信任专家和群体内的政治领袖，而不是群体外的政治领袖。部分由于这种两极化的信任，专家和两党团体的政策比内部政治领导人的政策得到了更广泛的支持。这些结果说明了政治领导人可能发挥的潜在有害作用，以及两党团体和无党派专家在危机期间塑造公共政策态度方面有效领导的潜力。
Two experiments examined the polarization of public support for COVID-19 policies due to people's (lack of) trust in political leaders and nonpartisan experts. In diverse samples in the United States (Experiment 1; N = 1,802) and the United Kingdom (Experiment 2; N = 1,825), participants evaluated COVID-19 policies that were framed as proposed by ingroup political leaders, outgroup political leaders, nonpartisan experts, or, in the United States, a bipartisan group of political leaders. At the time of the study in April 2020, COVID-19 was an unfamiliar and shared threat. Therefore, there were theoretical reasons suggesting that attitudes toward COVID-19 policy may not have been politically polarized. Yet, our results demonstrated that even relatively early in the pandemic people supported policies from ingroup political leaders more than the same policies from outgroup leaders, extending prior research on how people align their policy stances to political elites from their own parties. People also trusted experts and ingroup political leaders more than they did outgroup political leaders. Partly because of this polarized trust, policies from experts and bipartisan groups were more widely supported than policies from ingroup political leaders. These results illustrate the potentially detrimental role political leaders may play and the potential for effective leadership by bipartisan groups and nonpartisan experts in shaping public policy attitudes during crises.