Vol.:(0123456789) Political Behavior https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-020-09633-2 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER When Trust Matters: The Case of Gun Control John Barry Ryan 1  · Talbot M. Andrews 1  · Tracy Goodwin 1  · Yanna Krupnikov 1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Declining trust in government is often cited as the cause of declining support for policies that require ideological sacrifces. Yet pivotal to the efect of trust is the broader political context, which can vary over time. In a context of deep partisan divisions, for individuals who do not trust the government, even small ideologi- cal costs can signal the beginning of a process that leads to much larger ideologi- cal costs down the line—a process akin to a “slippery slope.” We demonstrate the conditional relationship between partisan divides, governmental trust, and support for policy through empirical tests that focus on the case of gun control. We frst show that the efect of trust in government on conservatives’ gun control attitudes increases as polarization over the issue grows. We then use a continuum of gun con- trol policies to demonstrate that the efect of trust on policy support can follow a slippery slope structure during polarized points. Keywords Trust in government · Gun control · Public opinion · Polarization Trust in government facilitates the compromises necessary to put in place policies confronting large societal problems. The costs of policies which improve the public good are unevenly paid, but trust increases policy support among those who pay the most for these policies (Chanley et al. 2000; Hetherington 2005). In contrast, when citizens do not trust the government, they are less willing to pay the fnancial or ideological costs to support policies that are not directly benefcial to them (Hether- ington 1998). Ultimately, this unwillingness to pay the costs of supporting a policy can undermine governmental efectiveness (Hetherington 2005). Although trust in the government is generally important to democracy, in this manuscript we suggest that trust takes on an especially critical role at a time of clear Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1110 9-020-09633-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * John Barry Ryan john.ryan@stonybrook.edu 1 Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, USA