Immoral or Incompetent? American Distrust in Politics and Science

Americans' distrust in government and science are declining with potentially deleterious effects on democracy and society. Understanding sources of declining trust is therefore imperative. Theoretically, distrust either arises from concerns about immorality or wrongdoing, or from pessimism about competence. These two causes motivate different reactions relating to the distrusted groups. Using multiple surveys of US adults (total N = 7,385), including two waves of an original experiment, I find that seeing scientists and politicians as immoral leads to lower trust in those individuals, while competence has little to no effect; distrust is more strongly driven by perceived moral wrongdoing. Further, perceived morality varies in its relationship to federal spending support, populist attitudes, and science policy attitudes compared to perceived competence. Accordingly, researchers should understand that people may see trusting entities to ``do what is right" glosses over potentially different definitions that significantly vary in their relationship to various political attitudes.