Market, State and Society as Codes of Moral Obligation

Wolfe, Alan

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-12166-3_2

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…This suggests that we will find unusually narrow trust radiuses there. By contrast, Protestantism is often described as an individualistic belief system because it teaches that everyone is to be treated equally and justly in the sight of God (Wolfe 1989). This suggests that Protestant societies will have a wider radius of trust.…”

Section: Determinants Of the Trust Radiusmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2011

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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.

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Section: Determinants Of the Trust Radiusmentioning

confidence: 99%