Internal Code: MAS5169

Psychology Assignment

A Multifaceted Measure of Trust in Politicians Cassandra Muscat, Kiera Cahill, Marika Ball, Mia Reynolds & Murielle Mazille Definition of Construct Political trust is a necessary component for the stability of any political system (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman, 1995). The level of political trust from society can have an effect on the implementation and acceptance of government legislation and public policies (Hammar &Jagers, 2006). The meaning of trust is heterogeneous (Castaldo, Premazzi & Zerbini, 2010). Mayer et al. (1995) defines trust broadly as "the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party" with "a willingness to take a risk" (p.4). While this seems a clear explanation, there is concern over the ambiguity and consistency surrounding the meaning of the word trust as it is also used interchangeably with faith, reliability and confidence (Khodyakov, 2007). According to Mayer et al. (1995) three distinct factors appear frequently in literature relating to trust; competence, benevolence, and integrity. Additionally the factor self-interest has appeared in research relating to trustworthiness (Combs & Keller, 2010). This study looks at  these factors alongside the existing trust literature to propose a method for measuring levels of trust in politicians. Scholars on trust have found competence to be an element of trustworthiness (Hetherington, 1998). Studies have found that politicians who were judged as competent also were perceived as being trustworthy which increased their chances of winning elections (Chen,Jing & Lee, 2014). For the purpose of this study, this refers to whether people perceive politicians to be proficient, effective and skilful in their profession.Benevolence is a Benevolence is a recognised determinant of trustworthiness (Levi & Stoker, 2000). It has been used to study the more ethical aspects of trustworthiness, such as focusing on the intentions of political institutions (Kong, 2014). It is believed that benevolent people would put the interests of others ahead of their own and act accordingly, suggesting that benevolence increase the level of trust for an individual (Critchley, 2008). Hendriks, Kienhues & Bromme (2015) recognises benevolence as a crucial factor of trustworthiness. In this particular study, Benevolence refers to whether people think that politicians genuinely care about the general public's interests.Hendriks et al. (2015) identifies integrity as an element of trustworthiness. A person's good character and values, including fairness and honesty are measured to determine integrity (Hendriks et al. 2015). Studies have found that politicians who display lower levels of integrity often end up defeated during elections while politicians perceived to have high integrity tend to remain in office for seven terms on average (Cwalina & Falkowski, 2016). In this study, perceived integrity relates to whether people perceive politicians to tell the truth and keep commitments (Kim, 2005; McKnight, Choudhury & Kacmar, 2002). Assessment overview Using the items developed in Assessment 2, this scale development report requires you to:

• describe the theory behind the measure
• perform an exploratory factor analysis on the items developed
• describe the steps taken to select the final items
• evaluate the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, validity) of your final scale.