By Bella DePaulo, PsychCentral, October 21, 2019
If you live in the U.S. and you think that your fellow Americans’ trust in the federal government and in each other has been taking a hit recently, then you have something in common with most of them. In a study of trust and distrust in America, based on a nationally representative sample of 10,618 U.S. adults, the Pew Research Center found that 75% of the participants believed that trust in the federal government has been shrinking. Sixty-four percent believe that trust in each other has also been dwindling.
Americans also believe that the loss of trust has implications that ripple through our lives. Close to two-thirds (64%) think that our slipping sense of trust in the federal government is making it harder to solve problems. An even greater number, 70%, believe that the same is true of our decreasing sense of trust in each other.
Who Is Most and Least Trusting?
Some people are consistently more trusting than others. The Pew Center researchers measured levels of trust by asking participants about their general trust or distrust in others, their beliefs about the overall levels of helpfulness or selfishness of others, and their sense of other people’s tendencies to be exploitative versus fair.
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