Who do you trust? A study of Canadian trust radius


Rex Wang, York University

This paper aims to establish a preliminary basis for the study of trust radius within Canadian society. The question “Generally speaking, do you think most people can be trusted?” has been the standard used to measure variation in social trust within and across populations, and a large body of research has used this measure to study origins of trust and how trust matters. However, scholars have suggested analysis via this measure can be problematic as interpretation of “most people '' can be ambiguous as some interpret it as in-group friends, relatives, and people they have contact with, while others interpret it as out-group strangers. Trust radius thus accounts for this by measuring the width of the social circle that trust is extended to; specifically, the measure focuses on trust for outgroup members and strangers relative to ingroup members such as family and friends, though it differs from outgroup trust alone. This distinction bears a critical implication, and has been used to explain the puzzling pattern in which cultures that are wary of outsiders, such as many Confucian societies, exhibit high trust levels. I aim to expand this research to Canadian society, starting with this preliminary analysis.

In Canada, social trust levels have been studied for both the broader population and the diverse social groups within , but trust radius remains unexplored. The diverse nature of Canadian society has unique trends absent in other western nations. Canadian immigrants tend to be more trusting than the native populations, and this general trust level tends to stay consistent overtime; however, their trust for other Canadians disproportionately declines as their stay extends. Trust radius may be key to understanding this relation as Canadian general trust levels rank relatively high compared to global levels, while their trust radius does not rank quite as high. Adopting the theory that social trust is established early in life and remains “sticky” throughout except in the case of critical life events such as unemployment, a goal of this paper will be to test whether or not similar trajectories can be found in trust radius on top of providing a broader statistical overview.

This paper will thus conduct a statistical analysis of trust radius in Canada utilizing the Canadian General Social Survey on social dimension, which included four waves of data on trust levels both broadly and in reference to specific groups. I will derive values for trust radius both broadly across Canada, but also across demographic groups designated by age, race and ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and more. This will give us a broad view of trust radius within Canadian society.  Furthermore, I will analyze trust radius in relation to major life events to test the hypothesis of “sticky” trust. Lastly, I will use trust radius as the independent and a collection of markers for health and social development as dependent in order to analyze social outcomes of trust radius levels. Through this analysis, I aim to provide a preliminary exploration into the discourse of Canadian trust radius, its causes and formation, as well as potential implications of differing levels within Canadian society.

This paper will be presented at the following session: