Propaganda’s Paradox: How Elevated Expectations Undermine Trust in Courts
Understanding the formation of legal consciousness is vital, given its implications for institutional legitimacy and the rule of law. Existing research identifies two channels shaping legal consciousness: experiential channels, such as litigation experience, and cognitive channels, such as media exposure. Yet these channels have typically been studied separately, leaving their interaction unexplored.
To address this gap, this paper draws on both survey data and experimental evidence to examine how multichannel interactions shape public trust in the judiciary. We find a dual effect of the cognitive channel: while exposure to rule-of-law propaganda independently fosters trust in the judiciary, its interaction with litigation experience undermines that trust. The trust-reducing effect of multichannel interaction is particularly pronounced among the wealthy: the “haves” unexpectedly exhibit a sharper post-litigation decline in trust than the “have-nots.”
Expectancy-disconfirmation theory (EDT) explains both trust erosion from multichannel interplay and the sharper trust decline among the wealthy. The theory holds that perceptions of public services depend on whether expectations align with actual experiences. The elevated expectations fostered by rule-of-law propaganda are unmet during litigation, resulting in sharper disappointment. These disconfirmation effects are especially strong among the wealthy, whose greater exposure to propaganda makes them more susceptible. We also conducted an experiment by randomly assigning online participants to receive either low- or high-expectation court statements, followed by a low- or high-performance litigation experience. This experimental test of EDT in a judicial context provides further empirical support for the disconfirmation mechanism.
This paper offers the first examination of the interaction between experiential and cognitive channels. It further complicates the presumed link between socioeconomic status and institutional trust. Finally, it shows how state-led rule-of-law propaganda may backfire, inadvertently weakening the trust it aims to foster.