CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 817Social Capital and NetworksCultural Differences and ValuesSocial Power and Status Dynamics

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 118 of the 120 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

How General Is Trust in “Most People”? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem

Delhey, Jan, Newton, Kenneth, Welzel, Christian·2011·American Sociological Review
DOI 10.1177/0003122411420817
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Generalized trust has become a paramount topic throughout the social sciences, in its own right and as the key civic component of social capital. To date, cross-national research relies on the standard question: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” Yet the radius problem—that is, how wide a circle of others respondents imagine as “most people”—makes comparisons between individuals and countries problematic. Until now, much about the radius problem has been speculation, but data for 51 countries from the latest World Values Survey make it possible to estimate how wide the trust radius actually is. We do this by relating responses to the standard trust question to a new battery of items that measures in-group and out-group trust. In 41 out of 51 countries, “most people” in the standard question predominantly connotes out-groups. To this extent, it is a valid measure of general trust in others. Nevertheless, the radius of “most people” varies considerably across countries; it is substantially narrower in Confucian countries and wider in wealthy countries. Some country rankings on trust thus change dramatically when the standard question is replaced by a radius-adjusted trust score. In cross-country regressions, the radius of trust matters for civic attitudes and behaviors because the assumed civic nature of trust depends on a wide radius.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/0003122411420817

Cites

118 of 118 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Citations

Cites

Show all 120 references

Research works printed but not linked: 11

  1. Dahl Robert A., 2000, On Democracy
  2. Forbes Harold D., 2003, The Psychology of Ethnic and Cultural Conflict: Looking through American and Global Chaos or Harmony?, 69
  3. Fukuyama Francis, 1999, Presented at the IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms, International Monetary Fund
  4. 10.1177/000312240006500103 · DOI · Paper page
  5. Inkeles Alex, 1966, The Modernization of Man
  6. Li W., 2002, Shehuixue Yanjiu (Sociological Research), 2, 11
  7. 10.1177/000312240206700205 · DOI
  8. Portes Alejandro, 1996, American Prospect, 26, 18
  9. Roßteutscher Sigrid, 2008, Political Studies, 50, 445
  10. Shin Doh C., 2005, Values and Life Styles in Urban Asia, 57
  11. You Jong-sungs, 2005, Presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 817

Related

Metadata

Authors
Delhey, J., Newton, K., & Welzel, C.
Affiliations
  • Constructor University (DE)
  • University of Southampton (GB)
  • Leuphana University of Lüneburg (DE)
Corresponding author
  • Delhey, Jan
  • Welzel, Christian
ORCID
Venue
American Sociological Review
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2011-09-28
Volume
76
Issue
5
Pages
786-807
ISSN
  • 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-8271
DOI
10.1177/0003122411420817
OpenAlex
W2090699109
Cited by
817
References
120
Citations by year
2026: 38 · 2025: 64 · 2024: 69 · 2023: 56 · 2022: 54 · 2021: 70 · 2020: 79 · 2019: 54 · 2018: 76 · 2017: 58 · 2016: 59 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 44 · 2013: 30 · 2012: 25
FWCI
108.21
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • American Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
  • Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion)
  • Multilingual Matters (Channel View Publications) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Capital and Networks
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
Keywords
generalized trust, in-group trust, outgroup trust, social capital, civic attitudes, civic behavior, cross-national comparison, World Values Survey

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review