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The American Attitude: Priming Issue Agendas and Longitudinal Dynamic of Political Trust

Poznyak, Dmytro
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342715776

Abstract Details

2012, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: Political Science.
For over fifty years the American National Election Studies (ANES) program has been measuring citizens’ evaluations of the trustworthiness of the “government in Washington.” The longitudinal dynamic of political trust attitude, suggests that in the last fifty years, Americans have generally become less positive and more critical towards the national government. This dissertation empirically explores the causes and consequences of changes in the level and components of political trust attitude over time. This research challenges the prevalent idea that public trust in government shifts in response to the changes in government performance. Building on the scholarship of cognitively oriented public opinion scholars, I instead advocate the view that people judge about the trustworthiness of the “government in Washington” based on the problems they consider important at any given point in time—a process defined as cognitive priming. The change in political trust is modeled using the ANES cross-sectional time-series (1964-2000) dataset augmented by the context level data, replicating the state of the national- and media agendas at the time of survey response. These contextual data include the macro-level measures of unemployment, inflation, consumer confidence, and the measures of media attention to the national economy and defense. Results from the multilevel structural equation models (SEM) with Bayesian MCMC estimation method suggest that issue priming plays a key role in the longitudinal dynamic of trust. First, I establish that priming occurs through the change in respondents’ national importance judgments and economic evaluations. These mediators significantly carry the priming effect of mass media and real-world cues on political trust. Second, I demonstrate that change in the volume of media attention to economic and international affairs and national defense issue domains increases the weight people place on these issues when making judgments about the trustworthiness of the national government. These priming effects, previously not examined on the time-series cross-sectional data, are remarkably robust over time. Third, I show that the effect trust exerts on political attitudes and policy preferences in public also appears conditional on considerations people have in mind when they think about the trustworthiness of the government in Washington. This finding disconfirms the previous theory that shifts in political trust lead to the unconditional increase or decrease in public support for the wide array of the government policies. Findings from this research suggest that the decline in trust—while not threatening the legitimacy of the American political system—nevertheless has a wide-range of policy implications. Its influence on the American public opinion also appears more multi-faceted and complex than it was considered before.
Stephen Mockabee, PhD (Committee Chair)
Marc Hetherington, PhD (Committee Member)
Patrick Miller, PhD (Committee Member)
Barbara Bardes, PhD (Committee Member)
293 p.
Political Science
Trust in government; Hierarchical linear modeling; Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA); Measurement equivalence; Psychology of survey response; Bayesian analysis;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Poznyak, D. (2012). The American Attitude: Priming Issue Agendas and Longitudinal Dynamic of Political Trust [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342715776

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Poznyak, Dmytro. The American Attitude: Priming Issue Agendas and Longitudinal Dynamic of Political Trust. 2012. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342715776.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Poznyak, Dmytro. "The American Attitude: Priming Issue Agendas and Longitudinal Dynamic of Political Trust." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1342715776

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.