International Trust and Public Opinion About World Affairs Paul R. Brewer University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Kimberly Gross George Washington University Sean Aday George Washington University Lars Willnat George Washington University This study argues that citizens base their opinions about world affairs in part on generalized beliefs about how much their nation can trust other nations. Using original data from a two-wave panel survey and a cross-sectional survey, we show that Americans hold stable, internally consistent, and largely pessimistic generalized beliefs about whether the United States can trust other nations. We find that social trust, political trust, partisanship, and age influence this form of trust, which we call international trust. We then demonstrate that international trust shapes whether Americans prefer internationalism to isolationism, perceive specific foreign nations as unfriendly and threatening, and favor military action against Iraq. The role of international trust in shaping opinion may be consistent with theories of low-information rationality, but competing interpretations are also plausible. The problem is that the international arena ... is a jungle. It is a state of nature . Charles Krauthammer (2002, A29) A lthough scholars have long been interested in con- nections between trust and politics, only lately have they begun to examine whether trust shapes public opinion. Thus far this line of research has focused on two forms of trust: political trust (i.e., generalized trust in government) and social trust (i.e., generalized trust in other people). Recent studies have argued that citizens use each of these as a heuristic, or information shortcut, in forming political judgments across a range of topics (e.g., Hetherington and Globetti 2002; Rahn and Transue 1998). It may be, however, that other forms of generalized trust also play important roles in shaping public opinion. In the present study, we argue that citizens use general- ized beliefs about how much their nation can trust other nations to form judgments about world affairs. Specif- Paul R. Brewer is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 117 Johnston Hall, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI, 53201 (prbrewer@uwm.edu). Kimberly Gross is Assistant Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, 805 21 st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052 (kimgross@gwu.edu). Sean Aday is Assistant Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, 805 21 st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052 (seanaday@gwu.edu). Lars Willnat is Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, 805 21 st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052 (lwillnat@gwu.edu). A previous version of this article was presented at the 2003 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. The authors thank Barbara Ley, Jarol Manheim, Lee Sigelman, Erik Voeten, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. This research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES 0201511). ically, we hypothesize that this form of trust, which we call international trust, influences how citizens perceive specific nations, whether they endorse internationalism or isolationism, and whether they favor specific foreign interventions. Evidence for this argument would carry important implications, particularly given that public opinion about world affairs may influence voting behavior (Aldrich, Sullivan, and Borgida 1989) and public policy (Chanley 1999; Page and Shapiro 1992; Shapiro and Jacobs 2000). To begin with, findings of effects for international trust on mass beliefs about world affairs would add a new layer to our theoretical understanding of how citizens form for- eign policy opinions. Recent accounts have shown that citizens base such opinions on abstract principles (e.g., preferences for internationalism or isolationism) and images of specific foreign nations (Herrmann, Tetlock, and Visser 1999; Hurwtiz and Peffley 1987; Peffley and Hurwitz 1992; Witkopf 1990), yet these principles and American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2004, Pp. 93–109 C 2004 by the Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853 93