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Good news reduces trust in government and its efficacy: The case of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine announcement
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 12 (2021), PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 12, p e0260216 (2021), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2021.
-
Abstract
- 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.
- Subjects :
- Viral Diseases
Infectious Disease Control
Political Science
Science
Emotions
Social Sciences
Anxiety
Surveys
Trust
Research and Analysis Methods
Geographical locations
Governments
Medical Conditions
Surveys and Questionnaires
Medicine and Health Sciences
Humans
Psychology
BNT162 Vaccine
Vaccines
Survey Research
Multidisciplinary
SARS-CoV-2
Cognitive Psychology
COVID-19
Newspapers as Topic
Biology and Life Sciences
Covid 19
Reasoning
United Kingdom
United States
Infectious Diseases
Research Design
Government
North America
Cognitive Science
Medicine
People and places
Research Article
Neuroscience
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 16
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLOS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....785c3b0ad816a8880e833cfc4bfe71e2