Trusting More, Questioning Less? Political trust and receptivity to arguments from authority in political communication

Political trust sustains democratic cooperation, but it may also reflect a broader tendency to align with those in power. If politically trusting individuals are more inclined to defer to political authority, can they remain critical of the information authorities provide? In this pre-registered survey experiment, participants (N= 1010) evaluated a series of political ar-guments from authority, classified as either normatively sound or fallacious. Political trust consistently predicted argument acceptability, without compromising evaluative accuracy. However, we found that trust was negatively correlated with soundness discrimination among participants who reported a stronger interest in politics. Exploratory analyses further showed that trust had a similar negative effect when participants registered identical ratings of trustworthiness for different political institutions. Together, these findings suggest that political trust may increase the persuasiveness of arguments from political authorities and that, under certain conditions, this effect may come at a cost of critical evaluation.