Public trust in leadership plays an important role in shaping compliance with health guidelines, influencing behaviors such as mask-wearing and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. New research finds that public trust in national leaders is shaped by how leaders make tough decisions about moral dilemmas. The study found that trust in national leaders is greater when leaders seek to save the most lives around the world, rather than favoring their own citizens.  

MSU Communication Professor and Department Chair Monique Turner and a global research team conducted online experiments involving nearly 24,000 people in 22 countries to understand how leaders’ decisions in response to challenging moral dilemmas affect public trust. Their findings were published in the journal “Nature Human Behavior.”

Read more on the College of Communication Arts and Sciences website.