Trust and Terrorism: Citizen Responses to Anti‐Terrorism Performance History

The “intuitive detection theorists” model of trust posits greater trust for correctly distinguishing danger from safety and an activist response under uncertainty about danger. An American sample evaluated U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) performance after two possible terrorism events in which DHS has the same activist or nonactivist response bias. Outcomes were two successes (bombing prevented or lack of threat accurately foretold), two failures (bombing or DHS action against high school prank leads to student deaths), or a mix. Hindsight empathy (a belief one would have made the same decision) differed across treatments but trust less so; contrary to a similar one‐event experiment in Germany, an active but incorrect response did not raise trust relative to passive incorrect action. Political conservatives were much more trusting and empathetic than liberals, and all ideological groups (including moderates) exhibited little internal variation reflecting experimental conditions. Consistently accurate outcomes rated significantly higher in empathy than either inconsistent results or consistent inaccuracy (the lowest rated); trust exhibited no significant differences. Results in this study show actual (experimentally manipulated) performance being trumped by the interpretive screen of political ideology, but this seemed less the case in the earlier German study, despite its finding of a strong moderating effect of right‐wing authoritarianism. Trust scholars need to attend more to effects of performance history (i.e., a sequence of events) and their limiting factors. More systematic testing of effects of ideology and performance history would enhance future research on trust.