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But Who Are Those “Most People” That Can Be Trusted? Evaluating the Radius of Trust Across 29 European Societies

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Abstract

As comparative research has repeatedly demonstrated that societies where people trust each other more easily are better able to generate a series of positive externalities, the study of generalized trust has taken pandemic forms. However, critical voices have warned that the levels of trust (the intensity to cooperate) are conceptually different from the radius of trust (with whom you would cooperate) (Fukuyama in Trust. The social virtues and the creation of prosperity. Free Press, New York, 1995). In this article, the classic trust question, i.e. whether “most people can be trusted or whether you cannot be too careful,” is brought in relation with tolerance towards cultural minorities, people with deviant behavior, and political extremists, as surveyed in the 2008 wave of the European Values Study. The results point to a hierarchy in social tolerance, furthermore indicating that while ‘trusters’ are more inclusive towards cultural minorities and people with deviant behavior, they are not substantially more tolerant towards extremist political voices compared to ‘distrusters’. Also, the radius of trust is context dependent, with especially economic modernization determining how wide the radius of trust is. We relate the findings of this study with recent research outcomes and implications for trust research.

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Notes

  1. As is evident, a number of these studies run into endogeneity: e.g. Uslaner (2002) argues that people trust each other less in more unequal societies. However, in a more recent study, Bergh and Bjørnskov (2011) qualify this thesis by arguing that trust also leads to more generous welfare states. This dilemma to a large extent reflects the schism in social capital literature, i.e. the distinction between the society-centered approach towards trust, with individual-level trust having macro-level externalities (e.g. Putnam 1993); in contrast with the institution-centered approach towards trust, with macro-level contexts facilitating the conditions in which trust can flourish (e.g. Hooghe and Stolle 2003).

  2. Putnam (1993) described social capital as “the features of social organization like networks, trust and reciprocity that facilitate cooperation.” While networks refer to the structural features of social organization, trust and reciprocity has been classified as cultural dimensions of social capital.

  3. While the original work of Fukuyama (1995) made reference to Confucian religion, as this paper will make analyze the European Values Study, this religious tradition becomes redundant.

  4. The factor analysis on the ‘Social Distance Scale’ (see Table 1) revealed a different factor solution when the 18 other, predominantly post-Soviet societies like Azerbaijan and Armenia, were included in the analysis. To give but one example, people with AIDS were loading on the ‘deviant behavior scale,’ while this link is not made in the sample of selected countries.

  5. These countries are Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), Switzerland (CH), Cyprus (CY), Czech Republic (CZ), Germany (DE), Denmark (DK), Estonia (EE), Spain (ES), Finland (FI), France (FR), United Kingdom (GB), Greece (GR), Hungary (HU), Ireland (IE), Iceland (IS), Italy (IT), Lithuania (LT), Latvia (LV), Malta (MT), Netherlands (NL), Norway (NO), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Sweden (SE), Slovenia (SI), and Slovak Republic (SK). Luxembourg is removed from the data file because it features as an outlier in many structural indicators, including gdp per capita. For each country in our analysis, a representative sample of approximately 1,500 respondents was questioned. For more information, check http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu.

  6. In the master questionnaire of the EVS, also “Christians” have been taken up as group. However, as a number of countries have not questioned permissive attitudes regarding having Christians as neighbors, we opted to leave this category out.

  7. Other methods to construct these scales have also been tested, like for instance means scales that represent the number of social groups within one of the three discovered scales the respondent has listed. The results are similar for the various scaling techniques. Nevertheless, to abstract as much as unique variance of the several indicators, factor scales were preferred above additive or means scales.

  8. Only controlling for the country clustering, i.e. not taking related individual-level controls into account, reveals no difference between ‘trusters’ and ‘distrusters,’ which means that the association between trust and extreme political opinions is suppressed by controls.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Paul de Graaf and Erik van Ingen for their intense reflections on this topic, as well as Hamutal Bernstein, Christian Bjørnskov and Jennifer Miller, as well as the anonymous reviewers for this journal for their thoughtful comments. An earlier version of this paper has been presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (Chicago—April 12–15, 2012).

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  1. University of Amsterdam, OZ Achterburgwal 237, 1012 DL, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Tim Reeskens

  2. KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Tim Reeskens

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Correspondence to Tim Reeskens.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7, 8 and 9.

Table 6 Individual-level continuous variables
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Table 7 Individual-level categorical variables
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Table 8 Country-level variables
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Table 9 Bivariate effects of context variables on social tolerance
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Reeskens, T. But Who Are Those “Most People” That Can Be Trusted? Evaluating the Radius of Trust Across 29 European Societies. Soc Indic Res 114, 703–722 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0169-7

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