Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Religiosity and Trust: Evidence from the United States

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Background

Trust is one of the key driving forces behind human action and an important factor in shaping human interaction. Trust can improve economic growth, political and civic involvement, democratic stability, and subjective well-being. Yet, trust has been in decline for the last 60 years in the U.S.

Purpose

This article tests the effect of several indicators of religiosity, including an index for both social and individual religiosity, on trust. Common religious doctrine instructs followers to place their trust solely in God, and can therefore be interpreted as a determinant of generalized trust. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to find out whether religious people are more likely to be distrustful of others and whether they are more likely to be misanthropic.

Methods

We use the US General Social Survey (GSS, 1972–2018, \(\hbox {n} > 10\hbox {k}\)), a large, recurring, and nationally-representative sample of U.S. adults. Using the GSS, we investigate the relationship between religiosity and trust (interpersonal and generalized) in a well-controlled model using OLS regressions. We examine both the effects of social religiosity (e.g. church attendance, membership at religious organization), and individual religiosity (e.g. belief in God, feeling of closeness to God, prayer), on trust and on misanthropy. Several additional robustness tests were conducted.

Results

The findings demonstrate that while social religiosity or belonging (services attendance, church membership) predicts more trust, individual religiosity or believing (prayer, closeness and belief in God) predicts lower trust. Likewise, social religiosity lowers misanthropy, while individual religiosity promotes it. Furthermore, we show that it is important to consider individual and social religiosity simultaneously because they correlate and have opposite effects–this is an intriguing and not entirely obvious finding as most people would expect that religiosity in general, has a positive effect on trust.

Conclusions and Implications

Our results indicate that religiosity is a substantial determinant of social trust and of misanthropy. The divergent results based on whether religiosity is social or individual in character is a new conceptual approach towards religiosity not previously undertaken in the literature. Ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation theory explains our findings—connecting with God disrupts connection with humans.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We will use term “trust” instead of generalized or interpersonal trust for simplicity.

  2. This refers to people who have a general hatred, distrust, or contempt for the human species.

  3. Defined as Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim.

  4. In Welch et al. (2007), religiosity was measured by activity in religious congregations, belief in absolute morality, frequency of prayer, and belief in the sinfulness of human nature.

  5. The conceptualization of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity can be traced back to Allport (1950)’ study of mature and immature religions, while the empirical measurement of the constructs were established by Wilson (1960) and Feagin (1964). Over the years, many criticism was leveled against the I–E framework (Hunt and Morton 1971; Hoge 1972; Kirkpatrick and Hood 1990), particularly the lack of conceptual clarity in the definitions, as well as the factorial structure, reliability, and construct validity of the I and E scales. Thus, we heed to Kirkpatrick and Hood (1990) suggestion that researchers should “pursue more promising methodological and theoretical directions” (p. 443), and simply classify social religiosity to refer to religious rituals and practices performed in fellowship with others, and individual religiosity to refer to one’s personal belief and practices performed by one’s self. We discuss these definitions in more detail in the next section.

  6. Smith (1997) has made a related suggestion: church attendance should reduce misanthropy and “fundamentalist beliefs, which emphasize the sinful nature of humans and a stern and authoritarian God” should increase misanthropy.

  7. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer of an earlier version of this study for this suggestion.

  8. At least in relatively religiously homogeneous society such as the U.S.

  9. We did some additional robustness tests and divided the dataset by decades to control for possible changes in society over time as it relates to religion. The results mostly concur to our main findings. See the “Appendix” for more details.

  10. The supplemental material will be made available to readers in a Gitlab repository upon publication.

  11. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer of an earlier version of this study for this suggestion.

  12. See the “Appendix” for the regression results.

  13. This may be specially advantageous under exceptionally adverse conditions, such as during war times or terminal illnesses, where dependency or trust in others is limited—when one faces eminent death, trust in God becomes more beneficial than reliance on people.

References

  • Addai, I., C. Opoku-Agyeman, and H.T. Ghartey. 2013. An exploratory study of religion and trust in Ghana. Social Indicators Research 110: 993–1012.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alesina, A., and E. Ferrara. 2000. The determinants of trust. NBER.

  • Alesina, A., and E. Ferrara. 2002. Who trusts others? Journal of Public Economics 85(2): 207–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allport, Gordon. 1950. The individual and his religion: A psychological interpretation New York: MacMillan.

  • Allport, Gordon, and J.Michael Ross. 1967. Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 5(4): 432–443.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, C., and J.L. Berdahl. 2002. The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 1362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bègue, L. 2002. Beliefs in justice and faith in people: Just world, religiosity and interpersonal trust. Personality and Individual Differences 32: 375–382.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bellemare, C., and S. Kröger. 2007. On representative social capital. European Economic Review 51(1): 183–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berg, J., et al. 1995. Trust, reciprocity, and social history. Games and Economic Behavior 10(1): 122–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berggren, N., et al. 2008. Trust and growth: A shaky relationship. Empirical Economics 35(2): 251–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berggren, N., and C. Bjornskov. 2009. Does religiosity promote or discourage social trust? Evidence from cross-country and cross-state comparisons. SSRN eLibrary.

  • Berggren, N., and C. Bjornskov. 2011. Is the importance of religion in daily life related to social trust? Cross-country and cross-state comparisons. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 80: 459–480.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berggren, N., and H. Jordahl. 2006. Free to trust: Economic freedom and social capital. Kyklos 59: 141–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bjornskov, C. 2007. Determinants of generalized trust: A cross-country comparison. Public Choice 130(1–2): 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Botsman, R. 2012. The currency of the new economy is trust. TED Talks.[Talk]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_currency_of_the_new_economy_is_trust.html.

  • Bradshaw, M., and C.G. Ellison. 2010. Financial hardship and psychological distress: Exploring the buffering effects of religion. Social Science and Medicine 71(1): 196–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradshaw, M., B.V. Kent, W.M. Henderson, and A.C. Setar. 2019. Attachment to god and social trust. Sociological Perspective 62(6): 1001–1021.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brañas-Garza, P., M. Rossi, and D. Zaclicever. 2009. Individual’s religiosity enhances trust: Latin American evidence for the puzzle. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 41: 555–566.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brehm, J., and W. Rahn. 1997. Individual-level evidence for the causes and consequences of social capital. American Journal of Political Science 41(3): 999–1023.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, A.C. 2007. Who really cares: The surprising truth about compassionate conservatism—America’s charity divide—who gives, who doesn’t, and why it matters. Basic Books (AZ).

  • Byrne, D.E. 1971. The attraction paradigm, vol. 11. Cambridge: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Camerer, C. 2003. Behavioral game theory: Experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clayton, Richard R., and James W. Gladden. 1974. The five dimensions of religiosity: Toward demythologizing a sacred artifact. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 13(2): 135–143.

  • Cohen, A.B., and P.C. Hill. 2007. Religion as culture: Religious individualism and collectivism among american catholics, jews, and protestants. Journal of Personality 75: 709–742.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cumming, G. 2014. The new statistics: Why and how. Psychological Science 25: 7–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daniels, J.P., and M. Von Der Ruhr. 2010. Trust in others: Does religion matter? Review of Social Economy 68: 163–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davie, G. 2006. Religion in Europe in the 21st century: The factors to take into account. European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie 47: 271–296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, J. A., T.W. Smith, and P.V. Marsden. 2007. General Social Surveys, 1972–2006 [Cumulative File]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

  • Davison, James D. 1975. Glock’s model of religious commitment: Assessing some different approaches and results. Inter-university Review of Religious Research 16(2): 83–93.

  • Dilmaghani, Maryam. 2017. Religiosity and social trust: Evidence from Canada. Review of Social Economy 75(1): 49–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dittes, James E. 1971. Typing the typologies: Some parallels in the career of church-sect and extrinsic-intrinsic. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 10(4): 375–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellison, C.G., M. Bradshaw, K.J. Flannelly, and K.C. Galek. 2014. Prayer, attachment to god, and symptoms of anxiety-related disorders among U.S. adults. Sociology of Religion 75(2): 208–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Epley, N., S. Akalis, A. Waytz, and J.T. Cacioppo. 2008. Creating social connection through inferential reproduction loneliness and perceived agency in gadgets, gods, and greyhounds. Psychological Science 19: 114–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faulkner, Joseph E., and F.DeJong Gordon. 1966. Religiosity in 5-D: An empirical analysis. Social Forces 45: 246–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feagin, Joe R. 1964. Prejudice and religious types: A focused study of Southern fundamentalists. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 4(1): 3–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., and U. Fischbacher. 2002. Why social preferences matter-the impact of non-selfish motives on competition, cooperation and incentives. The Economic Journal 112(478): C1–C33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fiske, S.T. 2009. Social beings: Core motives in social psychology. London: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fukuyama, Y. 1961. The major dimensions of church membership. Review of Religious Research 2: 154–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galinsky, A.D., D.D. Rucker, & J.C. Magee. Power: Past findings, present considerations, and future directions. APA handbook of personality and social psychology, vol. 3.

  • Gervais, W.M., A.F. Shariff, and A. Norenzayan. 2011. Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101: 1189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ginges, J., I. Hansen, and A. Norenzayan. 2009. Religion and support for suicide attacks. Psychological Science 20: 224–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glock, Charles Y. 1962. On the study of religious commitment. Religious Education, Research Supplement 42: 98–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glock, C.Y., and R. Stark. 1965. Religion and society in tension. Chicago: Rand McNally.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greeley, Andrew M. 1972. Unsecular man: The persistence of religion. New York: Schocken.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hair, J.F., W.C. Black, B.J. Babin, R.E. Anderson, and R.L. Tatham. 2006. Multivariate data analysis. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall Pearson Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, D.L., D.C. Matz, and W. Wood. 2010. Why don’t we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review 14: 126–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halman, L., and T. Pettersson. 2001. Religion and social capital in contemporary Europe: Results from the 1999/2000 European values study. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion 12: 1265–1294.

  • Hamley, L., C.A. Houkamau, D. Osborne, F.K. Barlow, and C.G. Sibley. 2020. Ingroup love or outgroup hate (or both)? Mapping distinct bias profiles in the population. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 46(2): 171–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J.F. 2006. Well-being, social capital and public policy: What’s new? The Economic Journal 116(510): C34–C45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J.F., R. Putnam, et al. 2004. The social context of well-being. Philosophical Transactions-Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences 359(1449): 1435–1446.

  • Hempel, L.M., T. Matthews, and J. Bartkowski. 2012. Trust in a “fallen world”: The case of protestant theological conservatism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51: 522–541.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmann, R. 2013. The experimental economics of religion. Journal of Economic Surveys 27(5): 813–845.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoge, Dean R. 1972. A validated intrinsic religious motivation scale. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 11(4): 34–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, Richard A., and K. Morton. 1971. The intrinsic–extrinsic concept: A review and evaluation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 10(4): 339–356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iannaccone, L.R. 1998. Introduction to the economics of religion. Journal of Economic Literature 36(3): 3665–1496.

  • Inesi, M.E., S. Botti, D. Dubois, D.D. Rucker, and A.D. Galinsky. 2011. Power and choice: Their dynamic interplay in quenching the thirst for personal control. Psychological Science 22: 1042–1048.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keltner, D., D.H. Gruenfeld, and C. Anderson. 2003. Power, approach, and inhibition. Psychological Review 110: 265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kent, B.V., M. Bradshaw, and J. Uecker. 2018. Forgiveness, attachment to god, and mental health outcomes in older U.S. adults: A longitudinal study. Research on Aging 40(5): 456–479.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, Morton. 1967. Measuring the religious variable: Nine proposed dimensions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 6: 173–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, Morton B., and Richard A. Hunt. 1969. Measuring the religious variable: Amended findings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8(2): 321–323.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King, Morton B., & Richard A. Hunt. 1972. Measuring the religious variable: Replication. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 11(3): 240–2510.

  • King, Morton B., & Richard A. Hunt. 1975. Measuring the religious variable: National replication. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 13–22.

  • Kirkpatrick, L.A. 2005. Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirkpatrick, L.A., and R.W. Hood Jr. 1990. Intrinsic–extrinsic religious orientation: The boon or bane of contemporary psychology of religion? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29(4): 442–462.

  • Knack, S., and P. Keefer. 1997. Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(4): 1251–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kramer, R.M. 1999. Trust and distrust in organizations: Emerging perspectives, enduring questions. Annual Review of Psychology 50: 569–598.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • La Porta, R. et al. 1996. Trust in large organizations. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper Series, No. 5864.

  • Lambert, N.M., F.D. Fincham, T.F. Stillman, S.M. Graham, and S.R. Beach. 2010. Motivating change in relationships can prayer increase forgiveness? Psychological Science 21: 126–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lammers, J., A.D. Galinsky, E.H. Gordijn, and S. Otten. 2012. Power increases social distance. Social Psychological and Personality Science 3: 282–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lenski, Gerhard. 1961. The religious factor. New York: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindstrom, M. 2012. Marital status and generalized trust in other people: A population-based study. The Social Science Journal 49(1): 20–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lount, R.B. 2010. The impact of positive mood on trust in interpersonal and intergroup interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98: 420–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacKinnon, D.P., J.L. Krull, and C.M. Lockwood. 2000. Equivalence of the mediation, confounding and suppression effect. Prevention Science 1: 173–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marschall, M.J., and D. Stolle. 2004. Race and the city: Neighborhood context and the development of generalized trust. Political Behavior 26(2): 125–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCleary, R., and R.J. Barro. 2006. Religion and economy. Journal of Economic Perspectives 20(2): 49–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin, and J.M. Cook. 2001. Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415–444.

  • Mencken, F.C., C. Bader, and E. Embry. 2009. In god we trust: Images of god and trust in the united states among the highly religious. Sociological Perspectives 52: 23–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meuleman, B., and J. Billiet. 2011. Religious involvement: Its relation to values and social attitudes. Cross-Cultural Analysis: Methods and Applications, Chapter 7, 173–206

  • Monsma, S.V. 2007. Religion and philanthropic giving and volunteering: Building blocks for civic responsibility. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 3.

  • Neuberg, S.L., C.M. Warner, S.A. Mistler, A. Berlin, E.D. Hill, J.D. Johnson, G. Filip-Crawford, R.E. Millsap, G. Thomas, M. Winkelman, B.J. Broome, T.J. Taylor, and J. Schober. 2014. Religion and intergroup conflict: Findings from the global group relations project. Psychological Science 25: 198–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norenzayan, A., and A.F. Shariff. 2008. The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science 322: 58–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Okulicz-Kozaryn, A. 2010. Religiosity and life satisfaction across nations. Mental Health, Religion & Culture 13: 155–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orbell, J., M. Goldman, M. Mulford, and R. Dawes. 1992. Religion, context, and constraint toward strangers. Rationality and Society 4: 291–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, R.D. 1993. Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, R.D. 2001. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rotter, J.B. 1971. Generalized expectancies for interpersonal trust. American Psychologist 26: 443–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rowatt, W., and L.A. Kirkpatrick. 2002. Two dimensions of attachment to god and their relation to affect, religiosity, and personality constructs. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41: 637–651.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sapienza, P., A. Toldra-Simats, and L. Zingales. 2013. Understanding trust. The Economic Journal 123: 1313–1332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schoenfeld, E. 1978. Image of man: The effect of religion on trust—A research note. Review of Religious Research 20(1): 61–67.

  • Sedikides, C. 2010. Why does religiosity persist? Personality and Social Psychology Review 14: 3–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smidt, C. 1999. Religion and civic engagement: A comparative analysis. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 565: 176–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, T.W. 1997. Factors relating to misanthropy in contemporary American society. Social Science Research 26: 170–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sosis, R. 2005. Does religion promote trust? The role of signaling, reputation, and punishment. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 1: 1–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taber, K. 2017. The use of Cronbach’s alpha when developing and reporting research instruments in science education. Research in Science Education 48: 1273–1296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tajfel, H. 1982. Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology 33: 1–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tajfel, H., M.G. Billig, R.P. Bundy, and C. Flament. 1971. Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology 1: 149–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tan, J.H., and C. Vogel. 2008. Religion and trust: An experimental study. Journal of Economic Psychology 29: 832–848.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Traunmüller, R. 2009. Individual religiosity, religious context, and the creation of social trust in Germany. Schmollers Jahrbuch 129: 357–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Uslaner, E. 2002. The moral foundations of trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uslaner, E. 2003. Trust, democracy and governance: Can government politicies influence generalized trust? Generating social capital, 171–190. Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uslaner, E.M. 2012. Segregation and mistrust: Diversity, isolation, and social cohesion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Veenstra, G. 2002. Explicating social capital: Trust and participation in the civil space. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 27(4): 547–572.

  • Vohs, K.D., N.L. Mead, and M.R. Goode. 2006. The psychological consequences of money. Science 314: 1154–1156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vohs, K.D., N.L. Mead, and M.R. Goode. 2008. Merely activating the concept of money changes personal and interpersonal behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science 17: 208–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wald, K., et al. 2005. Making sense of religion in political life. Annual Review Political Science 8: 121–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wald, K., and C. Wilcox. 2006. Getting religion: Has political science rediscovered the faith factor? American Political Science Review 100(4): 523–529.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Welch, M., D. Sikkink, and M. Loveland. 2007. The radius of trust: Religion, social embeddedness and trust in strangers. Social Forces 86: 23–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Welch, M.R., D. Sikkink, E. Sartain, and C. Bond. 2004. Trust in god and trust in man: The ambivalent role of religion in shaping dimensions of social trust. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43: 317–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Cody. 1960. Extrinsic religious values and prejudice. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60(2): 286–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yzerbyt, V., and S. Demoulin. 2010. Intergroup relations. Handbook of social psychology.

  • Zak, P., and S. Knack. 2001. Trust and growth. The Economic Journal 111(470): 295–321.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College - City University of New York (CUNY), 135 E 22nd Street, New York, NY, 10010, USA

    Rubia R. Valente

  2. Rutgers University, 401 Cooper Street, Camden, NJ, 08102, USA

    Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn

Authors
  1. Rubia R. Valente
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rubia R. Valente.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (pdf 119 KB)

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 5.

Table 5 Variables description.
Full size table

Nonlinearity

See Tables 6 and 7.

Table 6 OLS regressions of trust (nonlinearity). Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table
Table 7 OLS regressions of misanthropy (nonlinearity). Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table

Interaction Terms—Differences Across Denominations

In order to see whether the differences across faiths (i.e. denominations or belonging) in how religiosity affects trust and/or misanthropy, we ran additional models and tested for the interaction effects between belonging and denomination (protestant and catholic). As shown in Fig. 4 and Table 8, the effect of belonging was only significant for Catholics who attend church more than once a week, we did not find any other significant interactions (Fig. 4, Table 8).

Fig. 4
figure 4

Predicted Margins of Interaction terms from full models: Trust, 95% CI

Full size image
Table 8 OLS regressions of trust and misanthropy index. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table

Results by Decades

We ameliorate to some degree the problem of pooling over time by employing year dummies in our main analyses, but to run additional robustness test we re-ran everything separated by the 1980s, then 1990s, and 2000s/2010s. The analyses do not go back to the 1970s, since the prayer question started only in 1983. The results mostly concur—for the 1990s, once full controls are included, the main independent variables lose significance. This could be a reflection of different conditions across time.

1980s

See Fig. 5, Tables 9 and 10.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Predicted values from full models A2dec5 and B2dec5 by decade: 1980s, 95% CI. See tables below

Full size image
Table 9 OLS regressions of trust for the 1980s. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table
Table 10 OLS regressions of misanthropy index for the 1980s. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table

1990s

See Fig. 6, Tables 11 and 12.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Predicted values from full models A3dec5 and B3dec5 by decade: 1990s, 95% CI. See tables below

Full size image
Table 11 OLS regressions of trust for the 1990s. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table
Table 12 OLS regressions of misanthropy index for the 1990s. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table

2000–2010s

See Fig. 7, Tables 13 and 14.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Predicted values from full models A4dec5 and B4dec5 by decade: 2000s-2010s, 95% CI. See tables below

Full size image
Table 13 OLS regressions of trust for the 2000s and 2010s. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table
Table 14 OLS regressions of misanthropy index for the 2000s and 2010s. Beta (fully standardized) coefficients reported.
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Valente, R.R., Okulicz-Kozaryn, A. Religiosity and Trust: Evidence from the United States. Rev Relig Res 63, 343–379 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00437-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00437-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation