Economic Uncertainty as a Source of Self-Uncertainty and a Threat to Confidence in Elections

<p>Elections play a central role in building public trust. Yet, ironically, distrust in elections is also pervasive, posing a threat to many political systems. It is therefore important to understand factors that affect public’s confidence in elections. Drawing from work in social psychology, this research proposes that economic uncertainty should undermine confidence in elections, because it could elicit self-uncertainty. Two studies were designed to test this hypothesis. Study 1 ( N = 87,822) was a secondary data analysis of a large-scale multi-nation dataset. The main finding was that economic uncertainty predicted reduced confidence in elections especially among political liberals (vs. conservatives) and in nations where election integrity (i.e., freedom and fairness) was high. Study 2 ( N = 342) zoomed in on the causal effect of economic uncertainty in one specific context (i.e., the contemporary United States). Participants received either an economic uncertainty prime, a neutral/control prime, or a direct self-uncertainty prime, and then rated themselves on measures of self-uncertainty and confidence in various social institutions (including elections). The experimental conditions did not differ from one another, providing no support for the hypothesis. Follow-up analyses were conducted using self-report uncertainty as the predictor. The analyses revealed that uncertainty predicted less confidence in social institutions generally (as opposed to elections specifically) among political liberals (but not among conservatives). Implications are discussed with regards to confidence in social institutions and the different ways conservatives and liberals respond to economic uncertainty.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Psychology, PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation

Year dc:date.available

2024

Author dc:creator

• Chen, Kaiyuan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Michael Hogg
• William Crano
• Jason T. Siegel

• Economic uncertainty
• Self-uncertainty
• Elections
• Public trust
• Political liberals
• Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/772

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-1794