Trustworthiness Assessment: Mediating Conditions

Agency performance and accountability safeguards (measured by objective indicators) are likely to effect public perceptions (monitored by subjective judgments). In the second step, subjective public perceptions are expected to influence their views of agency trustworthiness and the decision about trust, respectively. What explains systematic biases in flawed decisions about trustworthy relationships?

1) Cognitive skills and civic education. 

Greater individual and societal level cognitive skills (exemplified by levels of education) have been found to strengthen the accuracy of judgments, measured by the correlation between levels of public trust and performance indices. Knowledge reduces uncertainty about the world -- and thus the risks of trusting others, assuming that, in the absence of information (like dealing with strangers), the default position is one of cautious mistrust. Education and knowledge are expected to be particularly useful resources for facilitating slow, effortful and reflective thinking processes associated with open vigilance towards accepting new arguments and beliefs. The more people know about civics, government institutions, and processes of public policymaking, therefore, the greater we expect their trust in political agencies. But less is known about the role of civic education in this process and in awareness about different political authorities. TRUEDEM will test these propositions through survey research by monitoring prior political knowledge and exposure to civic education programs in different societies. Cognitive skills and civic education will be regarded as presenting opportunities for medium- and short-term policy interventions, such as through school curricula and pedagogic initiatives.

2) Information environments.

Equally importantly, judgments of trustworthiness have been found to be shaped by the openness of information flows in any society (monitored by proxy measures of freedom of expression). Those with one-sided information flows (in closed information societies like China) display greater trust in political authorities than those living in contexts with two-sided information flows (like Sweden). The free press is commonly regarded as an essential condition for an enlightened public. Thus, more informed decisions about trustworthy political leaders, political parties, civil service officials, and state authorities are likely to be maximized in open societies with freedom of expression, media pluralism, and accountability mechanisms, all closely associated with the type of democratic or autocratic regime governing each state, combined with levels of human development, expanding literacy, schooling, and media access in each society. Some of the most troubling indications of democratic backsliding in recent decades concern increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and civil liberties, including through state censorship of the independent media, unofficial government harassment of critical journalists, and expanded libel or defamation laws, illustrated in cases such as Hungary, Turkey, and Poland. 

As well as freedom of expression and media pluralism, transparency and accountability in the public sphere are expected to be strengthened by institutions of ‘good governance’, as exemplified by judicial independence and rule of law, anti-corruption laws, and professional standards regulating public sector management.63 In contrast, if elected or appointed officials have repeatedly failed to fulfil their responsibilities and if they have betrayed the public interest in the past, through proving venal, scandalridden, or narcissistic, the skeptical citizens should conclude that they will probably prove untrustworthy in future. The public’s judgments of trustworthiness are likely to be more accurate in open democratic societies, characterized by legislative oversight of the executive and courts, investigative journalistic watchdogs, and independent oversight agencies monitoring maladministration and malpractices by state and local authorities.

The cross-national design of the planned surveys will provides an important way to monitor patterns of media exposure and attention, and the degree of one-sided or two-sided information flows about political authorities. In TRUEDEM project this issue will be examined in greater depth by split sample survey experiments varying the direction of information available to respondents about specific agencies, like parliaments, parties, and the executive, then monitoring subsequent levels of trust judgments. The process of arriving at accurate trust judgments is heavily dependent upon the accuracy of information and two-sided information flows from media pluralism in open and closed societies. The recent focus on ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ has revived attention on the critical role of propaganda and information ‘bubbles’ in the social media age. Therefore, any comprehensive research design needs to use methods such as survey experiments, as proposed in TRUEDEM, using split samples to monitor the response of survey respondents to alternative ‘one-sided’ and ‘two-sided’ information frames. The information environment is also the subject of medium and short-term policy interventions, exemplified by the protection of independent news media and in public service requirements governing broadcast communications requiring ‘political balance’ in different countries during the period of official election campaigns. The relevance of these policies in the information age with multiple ‘media bubbles’ in self-selecting different platforms continues to be debated.

3) Institutional arrangements.

Following the classic work of Arend Lijphart, the structure of institutions may also be expected to play an important role here, with ‘consensus’ democracies engendering greater trust by widening the number of groups with a political stake in the policymaking process, rather than winner-take-all ‘majoritarian’ arrangements. The TRUEDEM research design includes national cases with both consensus and majoritarian arrangements, as well as several mixed cases. The institutional arrangements are open to reform and medication although they can also be considered more like fixed constraints.

4) Cultural values.

The legacy role of societal cultures may also prove significant, reflecting an enduring form of ‘lagged’ values which condition contemporary judgments of performance, irrespective of positive or negative changes in the latter. Longstanding values, shared beliefs and similar attitudes observed among countries within global cultural regions are expected to evolve gradually over time, rather than responding immediately to short-term changes in performance. But a major disconnect between cultural attitudes and the actual competency, impartiality and integrity of agents and agencies can generate overly-cynical citizens who fail to comply with trustworthy agents, such as those people refusing to go along with prevention and mitigation measures against Covid despite the advice of medical authorities and the scientific evidence confirming the life-saving properties of preventative treatments. Or a major disconnect can induce the opposite sin of compliant citizens, trusting the untrustworthy, such as those expressing blind faith in medical quackery, uncritically accepting the word of political leaders and media commentators pursuing partisan advantage over the public interest, and believing online conspiratorial theories. In TRUEDEM, insights into these factors will be analyzed from the cross-national countries selected for comparison including ‘high-trust’ cultures, such as those in the Nordic region (Sweden), as well as low-trust societies, widely found in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics) and the Mediterranean region (Italy, Greece, Slovenia). However, cultural values typically reflect historical traditions, and these can be expected to shift slowly, if at all, in response to new information. Hence, these can also be treated by policymakers as largely fixed conditions.