Decision favorability, warmth impressions, and citizens’ trust

At its core, trust in government relates to whether citizens have positive perceptions of the government’s ability, benevolence, and integrity (Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer Reference Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer2014; Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman Reference Mayer, Davis and David Schoorman1995). For decades, studies have established that politicians and political institutions earn citizens’ trust by generating favorable outcomes. Most prominently, positive perceptions of macroeconomic outcomes lead to greater trust in and support for government (Citrin and Green Reference Citrin and Philip Green1986; Nannestad and Paldam Reference Nannestad and Paldam1994; Hetherington Reference Hetherington1998; Chanley, Rudolph, and Rahn Reference Chanley, Rudolph and Rahn2000; Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier Reference Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier2013; Van Erkel and Van der Meer Reference Van Erkel and Van der Meer2016). Hence, demonstrating results and producing outcomes “that matter to citizens” is seen as key to securing citizens’ trust in government (Van Ryzin Reference Van Ryzin2011, 746). Public employees daily make decisions of significant importance to individuals when interacting with citizens in the delivery of public services (Lipsky Reference Lipsky1980). In these situations, I argue that citizens’ trust depends on whether decisions made by bureaucrats are favorable.

Psychologically, people can approach new information, such as decisions made by bureaucrats, in different ways. Sometimes, individuals search for accurate information to draw correct conclusions, and sometimes individuals engage in making judgments that fit pre-defined conclusions (Kunda Reference Kunda1990; Kruglanski and Webster Reference Kruglanski and Webster1996). Regarding the latter, recurring studies have revealed that people, in general, tend to evaluate new evidence in a way that reflects a myside bias (Perkins Reference Perkins1985; Wolfe, Britt, and Butler Reference Wolfe, Anne Britt and Butler2009; Stanovich, West, and Toplak Reference Stanovich, West and Toplak2013). That is, when no cues to avoid doing so are given, people will tend to “evaluate propositions from within one’s own perspective” (Stanovich and West Reference Stanovich and West2007, 225). Furthermore, since bureaucrats’ decisions have significant meaning for the individual, I expect citizens to be even more inclined to defend their prior beliefs, positions, and interests. The longer-term result of defending their pre-defined position is to react with higher or lower trust in government depending on whether the decision is favorable to the individual. Thus, citizens will make trust judgments in a biased manner such that receiving a favorable decision yields greater trust in government compared to receiving an unfavorable decision.

Yet citizens might be willing to overlook unfavorable decisions if they have positive perceptions of encounters with bureaucrats on other dimensions; such as how decisions come about (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse Reference Hibbing and Theiss-Morse2002; Grimes Reference Grimes2006; Bøggild and Petersen Reference Bøggild2016). A well-established finding in social and organizational psychology is that procedural fairness can reduce the negative impact of unfavorable outcomes on support for authorities (Tyler Reference Tyler1990; Brockner and Wiesenfeld Reference Brockner and Wiesenfeld1996; Colquitt et al. Reference Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter and Yee Ng2001; Brockner Reference Brockner2011). Informed by this psychological research, political scientists have recently begun to investigate this interaction in a political context (Bøggild Reference Bøggild2016; Esaiasson et al. Reference Esaiasson, Persson, Gilljam and Lindholm2019; Magalhaes and Aguiar-Conraria Reference Magalhaes and Aguiar-Conraria2019). These studies focus strictly on principles of fairness related to the process such as voice or impartiality.

However, when we talk about concrete interactions between citizens and public employees, people might also be interested in other aspects than fairness. Scholars in social psychology consistently argue that impressions of the other’s warmth ^{Footnote 1} (e.g. friendliness or likability), is fundamental to impression formation in such encounters (Wojciszke, Bazinska, and Jaworski Reference Wojciszke, Bazinska and Jaworski1998; Fiske et al. Reference Fiske, Cuddy, Peter and Jun2002; Fiske, Cuddy, and Glick Reference Fiske, Cuddy and Peter2007; Abele et al. Reference Abele, Cuddy, Judd and Yzerbyt2008). While warmth is not theoretically orthogonal to procedural fairness (for instance, both dimensions refer to honesty), the warmth perspective might add new knowledge about what citizens find important in encounters with public employees. Importantly, the broad warmth dimension encompasses separable and distinct sub-components (Leach, Ellemers, and Barreto Reference Leach, Ellemers and Barreto2007; Brambilla et al. Reference Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, Cherubini and Yzerbyt2012). In particular, scholars argue and find experimental evidence of that a conceptually distinct part of the broader warmth dimension consists of “pure” warmth traits which are related to sociability and forming connections with others (Goodwin, Piazza, and Rozin Reference Goodwin, Piazza and Rozin2014). ^{Footnote 2} For instance, Brambilla et al. (Reference Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi and Cherubini2011) define this aspect by referring to five traits: kind, friendly, warm, likable, and helpful. These traits are clearly distinct from fairness criteria. We would overlook these pure warmth-related traits if we only examined the interactions with a narrow procedural fairness lens. This article contributes by asking whether this core aspect of the general warmth dimension interacts with outcome favorability.

Social psychology argues that warmth impressions build on evolutionary pressures where the other’s warmth is more important for survival than the other’s abilities (Fiske, Cuddy, and Glick Reference Fiske, Cuddy and Peter2007). Thus, we can expect that warmth impressions carry weight when citizens form trust evaluations based on bureaucrats’ decisions. This idea of warmth being a driver of trust also aligns well with the argument that we judge the trustworthiness of other individuals by evaluating their benevolence (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman Reference Mayer, Davis and David Schoorman1995).

The question then becomes how warmth impressions shape citizens’ trust when we also consider the favorability of decisions. How do people update their trust in government when they encounter an unfavorable decision delivered by a warm bureaucrat? I argue that street-level bureaucrats can mitigate citizens’ negative responses to unfavorable decisions by genuinely emphasizing warmth in the decision-making process. Citizens receive not only negative information in terms of an adverse decision, but also positive information concerning warmth. Individuals need cues to avoid evaluating negative decisions according to a myside bias (Stanovich and West Reference Stanovich and West2007), and people are generally only motivated to arrive at a particular, pre-defined conclusion “if they can muster up the evidence necessary to support it” (Kunda Reference Kunda1990, 483). I contend that warmth function as a cue of positive information, which could somewhat counterweigh the negative information from the unfavorable decision, even though warmth does not change the factual basis of the decision. Evidence suggests that information incongruent with expectations can reduce the motivation to engage in biased evaluations (see, e.g. Redlawsk, Civettini, and Emmerson Reference Redlawsk, Civettini and Emmerson2010).

In the case of citizens’ interactions with government, the theoretical mechanism connecting warmth and trust might be that citizens infer perceptions of the bureaucrat’s competence or procedural fairness when receiving cues about warmth (a halo effect). That is, when you encounter a warm and friendly bureaucrat, you might use this as a cue for that the process generally has been fair, which we know increases citizens’ trust and decision acceptance (e.g. Tyler Reference Tyler1990; Hibbing and Alford Reference Hibbing and Alford2004; Bøggild Reference Bøggild2016). Another theoretical mechanism might be that cues about warmth work through perceived competence (Fiske, Cuddy, and Glick Reference Fiske, Cuddy and Peter2007, 79).

When individuals benefit from the decision it is less clear whether warmth impacts citizen trust. On the one hand, individuals genuinely care about warmth and should, thus, improve citizens’ experience of the interaction and their trust. However, following an argument from the procedural fairness literature, people might tend to overlook other dimensions of the social context, such as warmth, when they are at the receiving end of decisions (Brockner and Wiesenfeld Reference Brockner and Wiesenfeld1996; Esaiasson et al. Reference Esaiasson, Persson, Gilljam and Lindholm2019).

Experimental design

The study is based on a 2 × 2 factorial survey experiment ^{Footnote 3} among 1,613 Danish citizens recruited through YouGov’s web panel from 25 February to 6 March 2021. The sample is representative of the Danish population on age, gender, education, and residence (see the Appendix for a power analysis and sample characteristics).