Matters of trust
Would you lend someone you hardly know a small amount of money? Are you open towards strangers asking for directions? If your answer is ‘yes’ to such questions, you are most likely a person who places general trust in fellow human beings. Social scientists and economists regard this particular kind of general trust as an important and valuable resource for a flourishing community. They know that a climate of strong trust in fellow citizens is doing a lot of good: it makes societies healthier and wealthier and democracies more vibrant.
September 28, 2011A team of German and British scientists, under the auspices of Jacobs University and the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, have studied levels of trust in more than 50 countries and examined where general trust, i.e. a sense of trust in people you don’t know and who might be different from you, is most evident.
The results have just been published in the scientific journal American Sociological Review (DOI: 10.1177/0003122411420817). One of the findings: West Germans are more trusting than East Germans. In Asian countries levels of general trust are lower than expected.
Scientists Jan Delhey, Professor of Sociology at Jacobs University, Christian Welzel, Professor of Political Culture Research at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, and Kenneth Newton, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Politics at University Southampton, used data from the latest World Values Survey, a large-scale international survey project representing more than 60,000 participants from 51 countries.
Based on the extensive set of data the authors have now come up with a measure of general trust that is truly comparable across countries and cultures. They found that general trust is weakest in Turkey, Rwanda, and Trinidad & Tobago. General trust is strongest in Sweden, Switzerland, and Norway. Germany is ranked 7th (West) and 11th (East).
As a rule of thumb, general trust is weakest in poorer countries and strongest in modern, Western countries.
Social scientists have long been interested in the extent and types of trust in society. For decades surveys on trust have commonly asked the question: Can one trust most people? However, until now it hasn’t been clear whom survey participants regard as ‘most people’.
“Our study defines a particular radius of trust by asking specific questions and differentiating between trusting family members and friends on the one hand, and trust in people from different nations and religions on the other,” explains Jacobs University’s Prof. Dr. Delhey. “If you correlate the new information with the tried and tested question about ‘trust in most people’ you can determine the radius of trust,” he says.
The scientists found that the radius of trust varies strongly between countries. People in Asian countries have a very narrow trust radius, especially South Koreans, followed by Thai and Chinese,” says Prof. Dr. Welzel (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg). Their trust is extended toward familiar others more than to strangers.”
Contrary to common belief, Asian societies are not high general trust societies. Most western societies, however, show a relatively wide trust radius.
The authors further found that their new measure of general trust shows its assumed benefits even more clearly: in high-trust societies with a wide trust radius, citizens are more involved in associational life, they are more tolerant with a stronger support for democratic principles.
