Political Trust as a Judgement Heuristic in Predicting Readiness to Comply with Governmental Restrictions During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The present study was designed to determine the extent to which political trust in government serves as a judgment heuristic in predicting readiness to comply with governmental restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an online study of 1,429 respondents, we found that trust in government and the evaluation of government actions during the COVID-19 pandemic were the strongest predictors of readiness to comply with government restrictions aimed at mitigating the pandemic (in addition to the previous restriction-compliant behaviour of the respondent). This pattern of results shows that government-related judgments play an important role in predicting one's readiness to engage in mitigating actions in the future. These two variables seem to be central in terms of uniting all the variables which potentially predict mitigating behaviour: an evaluation of the government’s competence, benevolence, integrity, and the perceived risk of the government’s actions with respect to oneself and one’s family, as well as with respect to the evaluation of economic prospects.