Political partisanship and perceived partisan threat relate to simple trust decisions

TL;DR

This study explores how political partisanship and perceived threat from opposing parties influence trust decisions in everyday interactions.

Contribution

The paper introduces the effects of political partisanship and perceived partisan threat on trust decisions in simple everyday contexts.

Findings

More liberal participants showed lower trust toward Republicans than Democrats.

Conservative participants' trust varied depending on the perceived threat from opposing partisans.

Abstract

Affective polarization in the USA is an ongoing and pervasive problem eroding cooperation and productive debate related to partisan and non-partisan topics. Such findings signal an inherent mistrust of opposing partisans that is likely related to the extent of threat people believe opposing partisans pose to them. Whereas past work has examined the mistrust and threat characteristic of affective polarization in complex social environments as well as in social perception, no work to date has examined their effects in the context of simple everyday decisions. The current work filled this gap in the literature by examining effects of political partisanship and perceived partisan threat on trust behavior indexed by a trust game widely used in decision-making research. Across two studies using college-aged adults (Study 1) and adults across the lifespan (Study 2), participant and target partisanship interacted to affect trust. Across studies, more liberal participants exhibited lower trust toward Republicans than Democrats. However, more conservative participants’ trust either remained stable across party lines (Study 1) or exhibited lower trust toward Democrats than Republicans (Study 2). In Study 1, these patterns were paralleled when substituting perceived partisan threat toward Republicans and Democrats for political ideology. Study 2 manipulated partisan threat to show larger participant-based partisan differences in trust when partisan partners were more versus less threatening. These findings in part support threat-related affective polarization in trust decisions and have implications for intergroup interactions along partisan lines in everyday life.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41235-025-00698-3.

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