Trusting other people

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1645
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Author: Sören Holmberg,Bo Rothstein
• Date: 01 February 2017

SPECIAL ISSUE PAPER

Trusting other people*

Sören Holmberg

1

|Bo Rothstein

2

1

Department of Political Science, University of

Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

2

Blavatnik School of Government, University

of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK

Correspondence

Sören Holmberg, Department of Political

Science, University of Gothenburg, Box 711,

405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden.

Email: soren.holmberg@pol.gu.se

The importance of interpersonal social trust is difficult to exaggerate. It builds societies and

lowers most kinds of transaction costs. The normative ideal in a society is to have high levels

of social trust and a minimum of differences in trust between social, economic, and political

groups. These normative expectations are put to a test using World Value Survey data from some

80 different countries. If one had high hopes, the outcome is somewhat of a disappointment. The

level of social trust is only on a reasonable level in a very limited number of countries—in the Nor-

dic countries, in the Netherlands, in Switzerland,Australia, and New Zealand. In most other coun-

tries, the majority of citizens do not trust their fellow man. Furthermore, except for gender and

age differences in social trust, which tend to be minor in most countries, there are rather clear

(and normatively unwanted) group differences in social trust in many countries, and especially

so in established democracies. Citizens with university degrees, in good health, and gainfully

employed do trust other people much more than citizens with low education, in poor health,

and out of work. Less fortunate and less privileged people across the world tend to have lower

levels of interpersonal trust. That is not good for them, and it is not good for society.

1|INTRODUCTION

The importance of trust is difficult to exaggerate. This is the case no

matter if we talk about trust in a society’s different institutions or

social trust in your fellow man. Trust helps to build what has been

labeled “successful societies”(Hall & Lamont, 2009; Ostrom, 1990;

Uslaner, 2002), and trust keeps societies together (Larsen, 2013;

Rothstein, 2005). Without trust, we would not leave our children at

daycare centers, eat food prepared by strangers at restaurants, or

deposit our money in banks. Without trust, many of us would be

armed, constantly looking anxiously back over our shoulders. Trust

makes everything more reliable and safer in a society. Things run more

smoothly, and efficiently, and many decisions can be taken faster

because complicated legal procedures are not needed for securing

contracts and cooperation. If most people are seen as trustworthy, less

doors need to be locked and less lawyers are needed.

The operating ingredient is that high trust tends to lower what

economist calls transaction costs. For people, mutually advantageous

and positive transactions—whether of an emotional, social, political,

or economic kind—will more often be brought about if all concerned

regard each other as reliable. Already back in 1972, Nobel Laureate

Kenneth Arrow stated that

Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an

element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over

a period of time. It can be plausibly argued that much of

the economic backwardness in the world can be

explained by the lack of mutual confidence (Arrow, 1972).

Another positive effect of high trust has to do with a society’s abil-

ity to produce and sustain public goods—like an efficient infrastructure,

rule of law, public schools, and a decent welfare system. These goods

must often be paid for by taxes. If large proportions of citizens do

not trust that the tax collectors are impartial and uncorrupt, do not

trust most other people to pay their taxes, or believe that many people

free ride and over use public provisions, then it will not be possible to

finance these systems. Without a reasonable amount of social trust

and trust in the tax administration, we would all be in a Greek tragedy

(Dahlström, Lindvall, & Rothstein, 2013; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2005;

Rothstein, 2015; Svallfors, 2013).

The blessing of high trust diminishes, however, if there in a society

resides different smaller groups with decidedly lower levels of trust.

That could cause problem not only for the people involved but as also

for the society at large. Larsen (2013) explains the falling levels of trust

in the United Kingdom and in the United States by the perception

among many belonging to the middle class of a large ethnically distin-

guishable group of citizens that are perceived as particularly untrust-

worthy, undeserving, and dangerous. Low trust acts as gravel in a

social and economic machinery. Activities involving low trusting

groups risk to take more time, to be more costly, and to be less

*

This joint research project was supported by the Marianne and Marcus Wallen-

berg Foundation in Sweden. The authors gratefully acknowledge their financial

support (MMW2012.0215).

Received: 12 December 2016 Accepted: 30 December 2016

DOI 10.1002/pa.1645

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1645.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1645

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of8