Even as trust in government and many professionals has been declining for decades, Americans’ trust in medical experts has tended to remain high. Gallup has shown consistently high rankings for nurses, doctors and pharmacists on measures of “honesty and ethics.”The Pew Research Center, which has been studying trust in scientists since 2016, has seen consistently high scores for medical experts. “This stands in contrast to that.”But as people have chafed under the constraints of stay-at-home orders, and as coronavirus case numbers have started rising again, that stated trust in experts may face a new test. Evidence shows that trust is a good predictor of behavior — people who trust medical experts are more likely to heed their advice. But research also shows two key factors tend to dilute trust in public health: political polarization and mixed messages.

Source: New York Times June 27, 2020 09:01 UTC