{"id":1803,"date":"2026-05-19T15:04:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T15:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=1803"},"modified":"2026-05-19T15:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T15:04:06","slug":"confidence-in-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/19\/confidence-in-institutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Confidence in Institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article is one of a series exploring responses to core questions in the General Social Survey (GSS), estimating period and cohort effects, and looking for historical events that might explain the trends we see.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confidence in American institutions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In this installment, we\u2019ll look at 13 questions related to confidence in institutions. We\u2019ll start with a detailed look at confidence in \u201cthe people running Congress\u201d, and then summarize results from the other questions. The complete survey question<\/a> is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am going to name some institutions in this country. As far as the people running these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in […] Congress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The following figure shows the fraction of people who answered \u201ca great deal of confidence\u201d or \u201conly some confidence,\u201d and a smooth line fitted to the raw percentages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Time-only<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The long-term trend is downward, from about 80% during the first iteration of the survey to below 50% in the most recent iterations. But there are ups and downs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It looks like confidence was increasing during the 1980s before collapsing in the early 1990s. Possible causes of the decline include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n