First-Hand Experience and Second-Hand Information: Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government

Little is known about how different sources of information drive citizen trust in government. To address that gap this article compares disaster evacuees to observers, noting how trust differs as attention to media coverage increases. First-hand experience supplies information to update trust through biological and personal processes and performance assessments, while secondary sources provide information about other people's experiences, filtered through lenses that take an active role in crafting information. These two types of information have varying effects depending on the level of government being trusted. Using surveys administered a year after Hurricane Katrina, I find that Katrina evacuees have the highest trust in federal government, until they start paying attention to media coverage, and that attention to coverage has the most dramatic effect on these evacuees compared to all other groups. I also find that increasing attention to second-hand information corresponds with higher trust in local officials, and that this effect decreases as the level of government increases. It appears media coverage creates a comparison in the mind of hurricane evacuees, causing them to update their performance assessments based on comparing their own experience to that which they observe, thereby updating their political trust

How Social Class Shapes Attitudes on Economic Inequality: The Competing Forces of Self-Interest and Legitimation

Using survey data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and national-level statistics from various official sources, we explore how attitudes toward economic inequality are shaped by economic conditions across 24 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Consistent with the economic self-interest thesis, we find that where income inequality is low, those in lower economic positions tend to be less likely than those in higher economic positions to favor it being increased. On the other hand, where economic resources are highly unequally distributed, the adverse effects of inequality climb the class ladder, resulting in the middle classes being just as likely as the working class to favor a reduction in inequality. Our results further suggest that people tend to see current levels of inequality as legitimate, regardless of their own economic position, but nonetheless desire economic change - i.e., they would like to see inequality reduced - if they perceive it could improve their own economic situation