Reconsidering the Empirical Measurement of Trust towards Unknown Others

Author:

Bodor Ákos1,Grünhut Zoltán1,Erát Dávid2ORCID,Hegedüs Márk1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Institute for Regional Studies, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, 7621 Pécs, Hungary

2. Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Pécs, 7624 Pécs, Hungary

Abstract

Trust towards unknown others is a fundamental issue in trust research. Actually, it can be said that this problematization is a generative source for the whole scientific framing of trust, regardless of its specific perspective, whether it is a psychological, situational, institutional or structural-cultural interpretation. This means that the notion of ‘generalized trust’ is definitely a core concept and a reference point for all research agendas in the field of trust studies. However, this status of the notion is heavily criticized both from a theoretical and empirical point of view. The current paper tries to contribute to these academic discourses by proposing an extended reading of the concept of trust towards unknown others. By doing this, the paper suggests that the focus cannot be only on the aspect of how one perceives others’ trustworthiness, which is measured by the so-called ‘standard trust variable’; it should also be considered how the given agent relates herself/himself to other people’s otherness. Therefore, the argument simply claims that trusting people in general means being open to others’ otherness. If this link cannot be explored, then trust in unknown others is constrained and limited. Using data obtained from the last two rounds of the European Social Survey, the paper presents a 31-country-based comparative statistical analysis realized on both macro- and micro-levels in order to find out whether the above-described theoretical linkage is verifiable or not.

Funder

National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary

European Social Fund Plus

Publisher

MDPI AG

Subject

General Social Sciences

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