How General Is Trust in “Most People”? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem

Abstract

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.

Association Membership and Generalized Trust: Are Connections between Associations Losing their Value?

“…Both elements are mutually conditional in the sense that they are jointly necessary to obtain the desired outcome (Goertz, 2006;Delhey, Newton & Welzel, 2011). Whereas significant research has previously studied the presence/absence of inter-temporal shifts in civic engagement across Western democracies (Paxton, 1999;Putnam, 2000;Stolle & Hooghe, 2003), similar debates regarding the existence and/or drivers of inter-temporal shifts in the engagement-values relation have been much slower to emerge.…”

E-Participation: Social Capital and the Internet

“…Previous studies have shown that the further people move from their immediate circle of friends, colleagues, and neighbour, the more sceptical they are (Delhey et al, 2011;Welch et al, 2007). As stated by Delhey et al (2011), "Differences in trust levels can be interpreted sensibly only when trust radiuses are similar" (p. 789).…”

“…As stated by Delhey et al (2011), "Differences in trust levels can be interpreted sensibly only when trust radiuses are similar" (p. 789). Unfortunately MHS data do not allow us to control the radius of trust.…”

National income inequality and self-rated health: the differing impact of individual social trust across 89 countries

“…Trust is often referred to as glue that keeps society together, or in less magical terms, a rational process enabling or supporting cooperation between individuals (Putnam 2000). Social trust is thought to represent a wide variety of interrelated aspects (Delhey et al 2011). First, as traditionally argued by economics, social trust reflects people's experience on how often general others in society can be trusted (Hardin 1993).…”