Consumer Trust in Pilots Part 2: An American Perspective

Prior research indicates that stigmas, emotion, and cognitive processes influence how a person trusts others. The current study investigated how American consumer trust in airline pilots is influenced by stigmas and affect. Participants were asked to rate how they feel about a pilot based on five demographic variables (age, weight, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation). The participants were then asked to rate their trust in that pilot based on those demographic conditions. Participants were found to trust young, slim, American, and heterosexual pilots more so than their older, obese, Arab or homosexual counterparts, with those trust ratings being heavily mediated by affect. Gender had no effect on trust ratings. This study is a continuation of a previous research (Winter, Rice, & Mehta, 2014), which investigated consumer trust in airline pilots based on pilot weight, age, gender, and ethnicity using Indian participants. In that study, affect was also found to have a strong role as mediator between condition and trust.