How General is Trust in "Most People" ? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

Generalized trust has become a paramount topic throughout the social sciences, in its own right and as the key civic component of social capital. To date, cross-national research relies on the standard question: "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?" Yet the radius problem-that is, how wide a circle of others respondents imagine as "most people"-makes comparisons between individuals and countries problematic. Until now, much about the radius problem has been speculation, but data for 51 countries from the latest World Values Survey make it possible to estimate how wide the trust radius actually is. We do this by relating responses to the standard trust question to a new battery of items that measures in-group and out-group trust. In 41 out of 51 countries, "most people" in the standard question predominantly connotes out-groups. To this extent, it is a valid measure of general trust in others. Nevertheless, the radius of "most people" varies considerably across countries; it is substantially narrower in Confucian countries and wider in wealthy countries. Some country rankings on trust thus change dramatically when the standard question is replaced by a radius-adjusted trust score. In cross-country regressions, the radius of trust matters for civic attitudes and behaviors because the assumed civic nature of trust depends on a wide radius.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftAmerican Sociological Review
Jahrgang76
Ausgabenummer5
Seiten (von - bis)786-807
Anzahl der Seiten22
ISSN0003-1224
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.10.2011

DOI

Zuletzt angesehen

Publikationen

  1. Palaeoecological Interpretation of a Late Holocene Sediment Sequence from the Alpine Belt of the Southern Mongolian Altai Mountains
  2. Measuring what matters in sustainable consumption:
  3. Removal of the anti-cancer drug methotrexate from water by advanced oxidation processes
  4. Communication Assumptions in Consumer Research
  5. Workshop "Hochschulmanagement"
  6. Fehr on Human Altruism (Editorial)
  7. Reining in rascal geographies of neoliberalism in the periphery?
  8. “I’ll Worry About It Tomorrow” – Fostering Emotion Regulation Skills to Overcome Procrastination
  9. ›Systemische Visualisierung‹ als Lernmethode zur normativen und gestaltenden Reflexion wirtschaftsbetrieblicher Situationen im Kontext der Nachhaltigkeitskritik
  10. Zur Effizienz von Lernprozessen
  11. Die Zukunft des Englischunterrichts als Utopie
  12. Stanislaw Przybyszewski: Kommentarband
  13. Global patterns and drivers of alpine plant species richness
  14. Springback compensation by superposition of stress in air bending
  15. Numerical Investigation of Influence of Spot Geometry in Laser Peen Forming of Thin-Walled Ti-6Al-4V Specimens
  16. Edge devices for internet of medical things
  17. The competition rules applying to the relationship between a minority shareholder and the joint venture
  18. CSR management and reporting between voluntary bonding and legal regulation
  19. Angels of Efficiency
  20. Integrating food security and biodiversity governance
  21. Mainstream und Gegenwartskunst
  22. National Stereotypes as Literary Device
  23. Justifying Theatre in Organizational Analysis
  24. A holistic approach to studying social-ecological systems and its application to Southern Transylvania
  25. Foreign Ownership and the Extensive Margins of Exports
  26. Consumer Preferences and Their Willingness to Pay for Local Products (by Means of Consumer Ethnocentrism)
  27. Transformation products of antibiotic and cytostatic drugs in the aquatic cycle that result from effluent treatment and abiotic/biotic reactions in the environment