Between Bonds and Bridges: Evidence from a Survey on Trust in Groups
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Between Bonds and Bridges: Evidence from a Survey on Trust in Groups Fabian Braesemann1 · Fabian Stephany2 Accepted: 19 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In every social transaction there is an element of trust. The degree to which we trust others, called generalized trust, is assumed to benefit from interaction with different social groups. In the trust literature, it is opposed by particularized trust, which represents our mutual confidence in individuals close to us, for example, family members and friends. This study, based on a survey with 634 university students from Austria, questions the strict dichotomy between the two trust types. Our results advocate for a third, group determined type of trust. This additional trust dimension is measured by the number of groups individuals participate in. It changes fluently between particularized and generalized trust, depending on measures of group context, like frequency of interaction or group size. Our findings show that generalized trust increases with the number of groups one feels belonging to. People with less diverse social interaction, however, have more trust in their peers than in strangers. Keywords Community · Social capital · Trust · 2SLS
1 Introduction There are many influential contributions highlighting the significant role of trust in others for societal well-being (Knack and Keefer 1997; Guiso et al. 2000; Putnam 1995; Stephany 2020). But the measurement of mutual confidence in others is a topic of an ongoing and controversial scientific debate. The critique aims mainly at two points. First, is it generally possible to assess trust with on single question? The question of how much you can trust most people might be understood quite differently across and even within cultural boundaries (Delhey et al. 2011; Reeskens 2012). Secondly, it can be questioned whether generalized trust captures our willingness and capacity for social interaction, which is the parameter researchers are actually interested in. If the responses to the generalized trust question * Fabian Stephany [email protected] Fabian Braesemann [email protected] 1
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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only reflect our attitudes towards foreigners or people outside of our everyday communities, as some scholars argue, then generalized trust would not be an appropriate approximation of our willingness for civic engagement. When levels of economic (Stephany 2017) or ethnic (Alesina and La Ferrara 2002) fragmentation are high, levels of generalized trust diminish, leading to unfavourable societal outcomes and further segregation (Stephany 2018; Alesina and Ferrara 2005). The less individuals perceive others in society to share living realities in terms of ethnic and economic identity, the less they share sentiments of trust with other members of society. At the same time, the trust towards individuals in high social and e
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