Incidental Emotions, Provisional Priming, and Political Trust: Survey Experiments on the Robustness of Political Trust among Chinese College Freshmen

Abstract

This paper examines the robustness of Chinese college freshmen’s self-reported trust in their political incumbents and institutions, as well as their support to the Chinese political system, under different experimental conditions. More specifically, this paper scrutinizes the possible “carryover effects” (driven by incidental emotions like happiness and anger) and “provisional priming effects” (driven by provisionally manipulated perceptions of the salience of corruption and political reforms) in their self-reported political trust using randomized experiments embedded in a probability sampling survey of a Chinese national university’s freshmen. Experimental data show little support for “carryover effects” and limited support for “provisional priming effects.” Moreover, the effectiveness of provisional priming is highly contingent upon (1) the population distribution features of the political attitude under examination and (2) related attitude extremity of each respondent. Overall, at least among the Chinese college freshmen under examination, self-reported political trust is quite robust against the influence of incidental emotions and provisional priming that are not integral to political dynamics under examination.