This paper examines how information on collective action affects the social policy preferences of voters, in context of the unfolding COVID-19 crisis. What happens to the social policy prefe-rences of voters when their expectations concerning collective behavior are met, or even ex-ceeded? And what conversely occurs when these expectations are unmet, and their trust is thereby breached? Leveraging a quasi-experimental survey directed to a representative sample of the Italian voting age population, this paper examines the extent to which information on lockdown compliance rates affects the social policy preferences of voters, conditional on pre-treatment levels of displayed trust. In examining voter attitudes towards a range of so-cial policy dimensions, we find that trust is most closely linked to attitudes on social transfer generosity, as opposed to policy universalism and conditionality. Moreover, we uncover that the effect of trust is moderated primarily by the material concerns of voters, where those that stand to benefit directly by the disbursement of social transfers are less affected by our trust treatment.