Threat Scenarios, Threat Perception, and Political Trust

How do threat scenarios via threat perceptions influence citizens‘ trust in political actors? Current debates in political psychology on the origins of threat perceptions as well as on the effects of such perception on fundamental political predispositions (indirectly) indicates that elite communication about threats might be actually able to change public threat perceptions and hence to stimulate attitudinal reactions among the public. This article develops hypotheses on the effect of (elite communicated) threat scenarios on threat perception as well as on the influence of threat perceptions on political trust at the national and international level. It argues, first, that only specific threat scenarios (threats of terrorism and immigration but not economic threats) should lead to increasing perceptions of threat among the public. Second, it expects threat perceptions to lead to a strengthening of trust in national actors and at the same time result in a decline of trust in international actors. These arguments are tested by self-administered data from an experiment embedded in a German panel survey (N = 3201) and two experiments with student samples (N1 = 203, N2=132). The results demonstrate that terrorism / immigration threats actually stimulate threat perception more strongly than economic threats but that the perception of threat is still substantially moderated by personal predispositions. Regarding the influence of threat perceptions on attitudes, the findings indicate few effects of threat perceptions on trust in national institutions, but confirm the negative effect of such perceptions on trust toward international actors.