Interinfluence of various types of trust in Russian society

Abstract

The article is devoted to assessing the level of various types of trust in modern Russian society. The study is based on a sociological survey. As trust largely determines the ability of the socio-economic system to be resilient and adapt to shocks; so its influence can have an ambiguous effect on the state of the community, the relevance of the work is evident. The aim of the study is to analyze the level of four types of trust (interpersonal, generalized, institutional and political) in modern Russian society and to study the relationship between them. The authors analyzed the respondents' answers to four groups of questions corresponding to four types of trust and made conclusions about the presence or absence of a general trend in the distribution of answers. It was found that within the sample, high level of interpersonal trust demonstrated by respondents is combined with a relatively low level of generalized trust and low levels of political and institutional trust. The assumptions concerning the factors that influenced respondents’ perceptions of various types of questions and the distribution of the responses were made. Finally, the authors made substantive and technical conclusions about the results of the sociological survey. The research does not provide the grounds for the final conclusions concerning the level of various types of trust in the Russian society. However, it clearly demonstrates a significant differentiation between them as well as contradictions in the respondents’ assessment of hypothetical and real situations.