TY - UNPB

T1 - Generalizing Trust

T2 - How Out-Group Trust Grows Beyond In-Group Trust

AU - Delhey, Jan

AU - Welzel, Christian

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Trust in other people is general when it includes remote and dissimilar others (i.e., out-groups). But whether trust in outgroups can be created independently of trust in in-groups is controversial, and conclusive evidence has been unavailable so far. This article fills this gap, analyzing under which conditions outgroup-trust emerges independent of ingroup-trust. Using data of fifty societies from the most recent World Values Surveys, we establish four insights. First, a high level of ingroup-trust is so common that it comes close to an anthropological universal. Second, outgroup-trust varies greatly and is only--yet not always--high when ingroup-trust is high. Third, a society’s outgroup-trust ex-tends beyond the level projected by ingroup-trust when human empowerment diminish-es people’s dependence on ingroups and opens them to cooperation with outgroups. Fourth, neither cultural legacies nor social divisions absorb the effects of empowerment and cooperation. To a large extent, trust generalizes to outgroups as a result of moder-nity’s emancipative impulses.

AB - Trust in other people is general when it includes remote and dissimilar others (i.e., out-groups). But whether trust in outgroups can be created independently of trust in in-groups is controversial, and conclusive evidence has been unavailable so far. This article fills this gap, analyzing under which conditions outgroup-trust emerges independent of ingroup-trust. Using data of fifty societies from the most recent World Values Surveys, we establish four insights. First, a high level of ingroup-trust is so common that it comes close to an anthropological universal. Second, outgroup-trust varies greatly and is only--yet not always--high when ingroup-trust is high. Third, a society’s outgroup-trust ex-tends beyond the level projected by ingroup-trust when human empowerment diminish-es people’s dependence on ingroups and opens them to cooperation with outgroups. Fourth, neither cultural legacies nor social divisions absorb the effects of empowerment and cooperation. To a large extent, trust generalizes to outgroups as a result of moder-nity’s emancipative impulses.

KW - Politics

KW - Demokratieforschung

KW - Politische Kulturforschung

KW - Gender and Diversity

M3 - Working papers

T3 - World Values Research

SP - 49

EP - 74

BT - Generalizing Trust

ER -