Confident Pluralism and Civic Trust

A new study identifies the importance of humility and tolerance to civic trust

Earlier this year, I highlighted a 2022 Gallop poll showing substantial and worrisome declines in the level of trust that Americans have in institutions of all kinds. One of the most important examples is the low trust in our political institutions, particularly given the likelihood of widespread distortions and falsehoods on social media during the next presidential election.

In the News

This week, Professors Alberto Cabrera, David Weerts, and Dennis Ross reported findings from the 2021 National Survey on American Civic Health. The survey, administered by Cabrera, Weerts, and graduate student Kristin Van Dorn, explored “the beliefs, practices, and life experiences” of more than 5,000 Americans with varying levels of civic literacy, civic engagement, and capacity for constructive political deliberation.

The survey defines capacity for deliberation as “tolerance for political difference and humility in political discourse.” In their report on the survey, Cabrera, Weerts, and Ross link this capacity to my work in Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference. Specifically, they focus on the ways that I have defined tolerance (“a willingness to accept genuine difference, including profound moral disagreement”) and humility (recognizing that our “own beliefs and intuitions depend upon tradition-dependent values that cannot be empirically proven or fully justified by forms of rationality external to particular traditions”). Their research demonstrates an important link between these postures and trust in government and observes that “tolerance has the largest impact, exerting a positive influence on public trust.”

The authors also indicate that tolerance and humility “reinforce each other,” meaning that “positive experiences in one domain of confident pluralism impact the other.” In a more granular analysis, the authors suggest that these postures are most prevalent among citizens engaged in “volunteerism and philanthropy towards the common good” and among citizens with high degrees of civic participation in political activities like voting.

In My Head

I’m grateful that empirically minded scholars have built upon my work using tools and methodologies that differ from my own. This is a heartening example of the connections that can be made between the humanities and social sciences. These links, once common in academic research, have too often been severed or ignored by disciplinary fracture and methodological arrogance. But that is a topic for another post.

More substantively, I was pleased to learn that Cabrera, Weertz, and their colleagues have demonstrated how my normative argument for confident pluralism correlates to increased public trust in government. Understanding how to increase institutional trust is becoming increasingly urgent in our fractured society.

Perhaps the most important and somewhat counterintuitive finding from the American Civic Health Survey is that respondents with the highest degrees of civic participation have higher levels of tolerance for political differences. This suggests to me that while media framings and social media rants highlight the absolutist rhetoric of political partisans, many actual voters have a greater capacity for tolerance and humility across political differences. If that finding represents American voters more broadly, then it’s worth pausing before we attribute the often divisive and zero-sum rhetoric of candidates and parties to their voters. On the other hand, we know that vitriolic and biting campaigns work to activate voters—candidates pay millions of dollars for advertisers and consultants to demonstrate the opposite of tolerance and humility on the airwaves and through social media campaigns. If the voters themselves really are tolerant of political differences, why do these negative campaigns work so well?

I suppose one possibility is that politically engaged respondents to the American Civic Health Survey overestimate their capacity for constructive political deliberation. Perhaps less civically engaged respondents are just more honest. A more optimistic possibility is that negative campaigns work at the margins: they activate angry and partisan voters who are often outcome determinative in elections. On this theory, some angry and partisan voters would be among the most engaged and others would enter only when nudged by negative campaigns. But a large segment of voters in both parties would be civically minded and politically tolerant citizens who on balance prefer one candidate or party over the other but may also see strengths and flaws in both.

Even if my intuitions are correct, we still face a major political challenge in the effectiveness of negative campaigns on activating angry and partisan voters. But the picture I have painted would at least suggest the possibility that many voters—perhaps even most voters—do not reflect the degree of intolerance and pride that typifies political campaigns and political engagement on social media.

In the World

One way to pursue greater humility and tolerance across political differences is to learn why some of your friends, neighbors, and colleagues vote differently than you or even see the world through a different lens. I’ve found Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics, to be a helpful, practical resource.

Haidt argues that most people are driven more by intuition than by reason, and that this intuition is shaped by our background practices and experiences. Political conservatives and political liberals both have strongly held but different values. Too often, each sees the other as irrational or disingenuous without attempting to understand how and why different values motivate them. The Righteous Mind lays out a framework for beginning that kind of understanding, which is likely a necessary component of greater political tolerance. And if Cabrera, Weertz, and their colleagues are right, a necessary component of increased public trust in government.