Gen(d)eralized Trust

Cornelius Cappelen,Petrus Olander,Jonas Linde

doi:10.1163/15691330-bja10010

Abstract

Abstract In this research note, the authors examine the extent to which one gender is more trusted than the other, relying on between-subjects survey experiments fielded in Germany, Norway and the United States. The authors’ findings reveal that respondents have substantially higher trust in women than in men, and that this is partly driven by gender role beliefs ascribing prosocial behavior more to women. Furthermore, across countries it is particularly trust in men that differs; trust in women is much more similar. The findings provide important insights into the sources of trust and why generalized trust differs between countries; they advance our understanding of how we relate to particular others and also groups of people with different ratios of men/women.

Highlights

Generalized, or social, trust – trust in other members of society – is one of the most studied topics in the social sciences, and an extensive empirical literature has linked it to a variety of positive outcomes, such as happiness, democracy economic development, entrepreneurship and volunteering.In this research note, we investigate whether people differentiate their trust between women and men
While gender as a social category is omnipresent, there is little knowledge about the gender-sensitivity of trust, in particular the issue of whether one gender is more trusted than the other. This is the first study to use representative population samples across countries to examine this, and we believe that our findings provide important insights into the sources of trust and why generalized trust differs between countries
This note provides a steppingstone for future inquiries into an important and understudied topic; how levels of trust are affected by the gender of the object of trust

Summary

Introduction

Generalized, or social, trust – trust in other members of society – is one of the most studied topics in the social sciences, and an extensive empirical literature has linked it to a variety of positive outcomes, such as happiness, democracy economic development, entrepreneurship and volunteering (see Delhey et al 2011 and Newton et al 2018 for overviews). It is more likely that people trust someone they believe to be e.g. friendly and unselfish (stereotyping about women), than a person they believe to be e.g. assertive, competitive, and selfish (stereotypes about men) We add to this that there often can be a match between perceptions and actual behavior, as indicated by the above cited research; and we conjecture that if people in their daily lives experience women to be more pro-social (selfless) than men, they will tend to trust them more. We know from previous research that there is a correlation between viewing women as occupants of the domestic role – a view present in countries with high levels of gender inequality – and the ascription of nice and communal attributes to women more than men (Eagly and Mladinic, 1994). We use these responses to probe if perceptions of gender and prosocial behavior affect trust

Results

C ategories

Concluding Remarks