Rapidly diverging public trust in science in the United States

2024/12/07 by Manjana Milkoreit, E. Keith Smith · 1 voice · 5 citations
Social Sciences · #Climate Change Communication and Perception #Computational and Text Analysis Methods #Social and Intergroup Psychology

paper · doi:10.1177/09636625241302970

openalex publication_date 2024/12/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Trust in science is crucial to resolving societal problems. Americans across political ideologies have high levels of trust in science-a stable pattern observed over the past 50 years. Yet, trust in science varies by individual and group characteristics and faces several threats, from political actors, increased political polarization, or global crises. We revisit historical trends of trust in science among Americans by political orientation. We find steadily diverging trends by political views since the 1990s, and a drastically and rapidly opening gap since 2018. Recent unprecedented changes are driven not only by decreases in trust among conservatives but also by increases among liberals. Existing theoretical accounts do not fully explain these patterns. Diverging attitudes toward the institution of science can diminish capacity for collective problem-solving, eroding the shared foundation for decision-making and political discourse.

Citations

• The Partisan Brain

Cited by

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Discussions

• Interesting new piece on #trustinscience at PUS. The authors argue that existing theory falls flat in explaining this and it left me wondering if this is—on average—an individual-level motivated tru [bsky, 5 points, 2 comments]

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