Circles of trust: a relational approach to social desirability bias in political polling
Abstract
Traditional approaches treat social desirability bias (SDB) in political polling as a stable individual trait. This study challenges this assumption by introducing the “circles of trust” framework, which conceptualizes SDB as a contextual variable dependent on the relational distance between respondents and their interlocutors. Using data from a national telephone survey in Mexico (n = 1,008), we measured respondents’ comfort in expressing political opinions across five social contexts: partners, family, friends, work colleagues, and survey interviewers. The results reveal an unexpected pattern: while comfort decreases from intimate relationships (partners: 80.5 %, family: 80 %) to broader social contexts (friends: 73 %, colleagues: 63 %), survey interviewers occupy a distinct position (78.5 %) characterized by higher comfort than friends or colleagues. This “pollster advantage” appears to be linked to perceived professional neutrality and anonymity. Crucially, institutional trust in elections strongly predicts both comfort with interviewers and self-reported response authenticity, suggesting that deficits in democratic legitimacy may systematically bias polling data. These findings have methodological implications for survey design in polarized democracies.
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