Replication Data for: "The Relevance of Culture: Collectivism Reduces Negativity Biases in Political Trust"

In political science, extensive research has explored negativity biases in citizens’ attitudes and behaviors. In particular, we know that citizens’ political evaluations tend to be more strongly influenced by negative than positive perceptions of traits, events and policy outcomes. In this paper, I argue that culture is a significant yet understudied correlate of negativity biases. A multilevel analysis using the World Values Survey (WVS) demonstrates that the negativity bias in political trust weakens as a society’s level of collectivism increases. Next, I explore the effect of cultural values at the individual level with data from the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS). In line with the results from the WVS, I find that collectivism reduces the negative-positive asymmetry in citizens’ political trust based on perceived institutional performance. These results suggest that negativity biases should not be universally assumed as a defining feature of citizens’ attitudes toward government across different cultural contexts.

在政治学领域，已有大量研究探讨了公民态度与行为中的负面偏差（negativity bias）。具体而言，学界已证实，公民的政治评价往往更多受到对特质、事件与政策结果的负面感知，而非正面感知的影响。本文提出，文化是负面偏差的一项重要却未得到充分研究的关联因素。借助世界价值观调查（World Values Survey, WVS）的数据开展多水平分析后，研究发现：随着社会集体主义水平的提升，政治信任中的负面偏差会有所减弱。随后，本文利用亚洲晴雨表调查（Asian Barometer Survey, ABS）的个体层面数据，进一步探究了文化价值观的个体层面效应。与世界价值观调查的结果一致，本文发现集体主义能够削弱公民基于感知制度绩效形成的政治信任正负不对称性。上述研究结果表明，不应在不同文化语境下一概将负面偏差视为公民对政府态度的典型特征。