How childhood socioeconomic status (childhood SES) could influence scope of trust: The mediating role of neuroticism and uncertainty aversion

Abstract

According to life history theory, trusting others is an investment where great benefits go with substantial risks. Then, choosing to trust a wide range of people or only a small circle of people could implicate different risk-and-benefit trade-offs, and have different influence on individuals' survival and development. Such trade-offs could be reflected by scope of trust, a well-studied concept in sociological research, being defined as “the width of one's circle of trusted people”. Integrating this concept into the life history framework, the current study explored the effects of childhood socioeconomic status (childhood SES) on scope of trust and the possible mediating mechanisms. Study1 found the associations between disadvantaged childhood SES and a narrower scope of trust with a large-scale nationally representative sample (N = 29,798) from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). Study 2 (N = 437) further found that neuroticism traits and uncertainty aversion could mediate the proposed relationship between childhood SES and scope of trust. In conclusion, the current results showed that the relationship between childhood SES and one's scope of trust could be mediated by maladaptive personality traits. The current findings enriched our understandings of the effects of childhood resource availability on social trust from the perspective of life history theory.