scholarly journals Good news reduces trust in government and its efficacy: The case of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine announcement

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0260216
Author(s):  
Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap ◽  
Christel Koop ◽  
Konstantinos Matakos ◽  
Aslı Unan ◽  
Nina Weber
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Significant Decline ◽  
Good News ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Reasoning Style ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Global Stock ◽  
Styles Of Reasoning

The announcement of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine success on November 9, 2020 led to a global stock market surge. But how did the general public respond to such good news? We leverage the unexpected vaccine announcement to assess the effect of good news on citizens’ government evaluations, anxiety, beliefs and elicited behaviors in the US and the UK. While most outcomes were unaffected by the news, trust in government and elected politicians (and their competency) saw a significant decline in both countries. As the news did not concern the governments, and the governments did not have time to act on the news, our results suggest that the decline of trust is more likely explained by the psychological impact of good news on reasoning style. In particular, we suggest two possible styles of reasoning that might explain our results: a form of motivated reasoning and a reasoning heuristic of relative comparison.

scholarly journals Good news for whom? The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine announcement reduced political trust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap ◽  
Christel Koop ◽  
Konstantinos Matakos ◽  
Asli Unan ◽  
Nina Sophie Weber
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Good News ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Psychological Mechanism ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Global Stock

The announcement of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine success on 9 November 2020 led to a global stock market surge. But how did the general public respond to such good news? We report results of a nation-wide natural experiment in the US and the UK on how the vaccine news influenced citizens' government evaluations, anxiety, beliefs and elicited behaviors. While most outcomes were unaffected by the news, trust in government and elected politicians (and their competency) saw a significant decline in both countries. As the news did not concern the government, and the government did not have time to act on the news, our results suggest a dispositional response to positive news more likely to be explained by a form of the psychological mechanism of motivated reasoning. They also offer a novel insight regarding the association between trust in government and compliance with its policies: anxiety might explain both.

scholarly journals Candidate evaluations across the aisle: Cross-cultural and experimental evidence that out-partisans value candidate warmth more than in-partisans

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bor ◽  
Lasse Laustsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Total N ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
The Us ◽  
Candidate Evaluations ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Firm Evidence

Partisans view their own candidates through rose-colored glasses and see competing candidates much more negatively. However, recent advances in political behavior reveal that such directional motivated reasoning is not simply about love and hate but also about more nuanced shifts in preferences. Combining two insights from the psychological sciences—coalitional reasoning and a general dislike of self-interested leaders—we form the novel prediction that voters pay more attention to out-party than to in-party candidates’ warmth. Across three studies, we show firm evidence for this prediction relying on a novel dataset encompassing data from twenty-seven elections from seven countries (Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US) and a re-analysis of existing experimental data (Total N=140K). Our paper reveals sophisticated psychological mechanisms regulating the importance of candidate warmth and implies that candidates seeking to reduce the partisan gap should establish a warm image.

The Politics of Prophecy: The US Culture Wars and the Battle Over Public Education in the Left Behind Series for Kids

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Ann Abate Michelle
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Church History ◽  
Good News ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
School Prayer ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Religious Books ◽  
The Us

This essay argues that in spite of their obvious Biblically-based subject matter, clear Christian content, and undeniable evangelical perspective, the Left Behind novels for kids are not simply religious books; they are also political ones. Co-authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins may claim that their narratives are interested in sharing the good news about Jesus for the sake of the future, but they are equally concerned with offering commentary on contentious US cultural issues in the present. Given the books’ adolescent readership, they are especially preoccupied with the ongoing conservative crusade concerning school prayer. As advocates for this issue, LaHaye and Jenkins make use of a potent blend of current socio-political arguments and of past events in evangelical church history: namely, the American Sunday School Movement (ASSM). These free, open-access Sabbath schools became the model for the public education system in the United States. In drawing on this history, the Left Behind series suggests that the ASSM provides an important precedent for the presence not simply of Christianity in the nation's public school system, but of evangelical faith in particular.

‘To see oursels as ithers see us’: Reflections on Scottish Independence from the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scottish Diaspora

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.

Identity Politics and Migration

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Current ◽  
Respective Host

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document