Conference Agenda

An increasing amount of citizens are accepting conspiracy theories, in the sense that they believe that situations or events are secretly and with negative intent manipulated by (powerful) groups of actors. While some studies have untangled that accepting conspiracy beliefs can have adverse psychological consequences, the aim of this study is to understand what drives the acceptance of conspiracy beliefs by highlighting the complex role of social trust. Social trust, defined as the “belief that others will not, at worst, knowingly or willingly do you harm and will, at best, act in your interests” is expected to be linked to accepting conspiracy theories as a general audience might not necessarily be aware of the intentions the sender of conspiracy beliefs has, thereby embracing the information as it might serve one’s interests. From the understanding that generalized trust might also have a ‘dark side’ with a naïve acceptance of conspiracy beliefs, we therefore propose that the extent to which generalized trust is related to the acceptance of conspiracy beliefs is contingent upon cognitive sophistication, proxied by educational levels. To empirically verify these hypotheses, we will analyze data from the most recent European Social Survey Round 10 Data (2020). This cross-national survey aims to monitor changing attitudes and values within Europe and contains suitable variables regarding the acceptance of conspiracy beliefs, social trust, and education. The results of our analysis indicate that while social trust lowers the acceptance of conspiracy beliefs, the effect is rather weak for lower-educated respondents.

Political parties that serve in the executive typically experience a “cost of governing” — support attrition following a party’s service as a member of a governing coalition. Not all parties experience these costs equally, with the European far-right experiencing higher governing costs than other parties. Theories that attempt to explain this discrepancy assume that far-right voters more harshly evaluate their government and party when it serves in the executive than other party supporters. At the same time, we should expect that voters whose preferred party enters government are happier with the way democracy functions and feel closer to their party. Using data from nine waves of the European Social Survey (ESS), I show that on average, far-right party supporters are dissatisfied with government while in opposition, but become more satisfied and more attached to their party than most other parties once they enter the executive. The far-right’s high governing costs are inversely related to evaluations of the government and party attachment.

Citizens who vote for a losing party tend to feel less satisfied with democracy and its procedures than those who vote for a winner. Despite the extensive documentation of this phenomenon, commonly referred to as the “winner–loser gap,” the temporal dynamics of its initial emergence lack comprehensive scrutiny. This research addresses the topic by introducing and testing a new theoretical framework, distinguishing between short- and long-term effects. Short-term effects imply that voters partly adjust their attitudes toward the political system already upon learning the election outcome, due to distinct emotions and altered perceived personal benefits. Meanwhile, long-term effects play out gradually in the post-election period, due to factors such as social reinforcement, motivated reasoning, and partisan news consumption, meaning that it takes some time for a new “winner–loser gap” to fully develop. The empirical analysis relies on 10 samples from the European Social Survey that happened to be gathered during periods when narrow election outcomes emerged. By mapping the dates that each response was collected, I can track how attitudinal responses unfolded in relation to the election outcomes. The study reveals that, at least in the European context, it is the long-term mechanisms that predominantly explain the emergence of the "winner–loser gap." Notably, in elections where a government transition occurred, a new gap did not materialize until a few weeks after the outcome was solidified. These findings hold important implications for understanding and addressing the risk of electoral instability during election periods.

Trust towards unknown others is a fundamental issue in trust research. Actually, it can be said that this problematization is a generative source for the whole scientific framing of trust, regardless of its specific perspective, whether it is a psychological, situational, institutional or structural-cultural interpretation. This means that the notion of ‘generalized trust’ (or in other names ‘universal’ and ‘moral’ trust) is definitely a core concept and a reference point for all research agendas in the field of trust studies. However, this status of the notion is heavily criticized both from a theoretical and empirical point of view.

The current paper tries to contribute to these academic discourses by proposing an extended reading of the concept of trust towards unknown others. By doing this, the paper suggests that the focus cannot be only on the aspect of how one perceives others’ trustworthiness, which is measured by the so-called ‘standard trust variable’; it should also be considered how the given agent relates herself/himself to other people’s otherness. Therefore, the argument simply claims that trusting people in general means being open to others’ otherness. If this link cannot be explored, then trust in unknown others is constrained and limited.

Our paper is following on the path that has grounded by, among others, Helliwell and Putnam (2004), Welzel (2010), Sturgis and Smith (2010), and Delhey et al. (2011) who all wanted to better understand whether the reference to ‘most people’ in the standard variable really reflects on unknown others or it is interpreted by the survey respondents as a kind of in-group. Addressing this problem certain studies apply the trust-radius logic, while others turn towards more qualitative checking methods. This paper focuses on the aspect of how individual agents relate themselves to others’ otherness.

Using data obtained from the last two rounds of the European Social Survey, the paper presents a 31-country-based comparative statistical analysis realized on both macro- and micro-levels in order to find out whether the above-described theoretical linkage is verifiable or not.