This article analyses the validity of the standard question, ‘Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?’. It builds on unique material, including survey responses (N = 356) and letters (N = 28) from students aged 18–19 years, collected by the author in seven secondary schools in Stockholm. The results suggest that the standard question is less valid as a measure on generalized trust than is commonly assumed in trust research. Rather than referring to trust in people in general, about a third of the responses expressed themes related to rational trust, that is, trust is domain-specific and person-specific. Systematic variation between different school contexts indicates that the standard question reflects social trust in a limited social sphere rather than trust in ‘most people’. The conclusion is that the standard trust question has a problem with validity among young respondents.
AbdelzadehA.LundbergE. (2017). Solid or flexible? Social trust from early adolescence to young adulthood. Scandinavian Political Studies, 40(2), 207–227.
2.
BacharachM.GambettaD. (2001). Trust in signs. In KarenS.CookS. (Eds.), Trust in society (pp. 148–184). New York, NY: Russel Sage Foundation.
3.
BakkerL.DrekkerK. (2012). Social trust in urban neighbourhoods: The effect of relative ethnic group position. Urban Studies, 49(10), 2031–2047.
4.
ChenC. C.SaparitoP.BelkinL. (2011). Responding to trust breaches: The domain specificity of trust and the role of affect. Journal of Trust Research, 1(1), 85–106.
5.
ColemanJ. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
6.
DelheyJ.NewtonK. (2003). Who trusts? The origins of social trust in seven societies. European Societies, 5(2), 93–137.
7.
DelheyJ.NewtonK. (2005). Predicting cross-national levels of social trust: Global pattern or Nordic exceptionalism?European Sociological Review, 21(4), 311–327.
8.
DelheyJ.NewtonK.WelzelC. (2011). How general is trust in ‘most people’? Solving the radius of trust problem. American Sociological Review, 76(5), 786–807.
9.
FreitagM.BauerP. C. (2013). Testing for measurement equivalence in surveys: Dimensions of social trust across cultural contexts. Public Opinion Quarterly, 77(S1), 24–44.
10.
FreitagM.BauerP. C. (2016). Personality traits and the propensity to trust friends and strangers. The Social Science Journal, 53(4), 467–476.
11.
FreitagM.TraunmüllerR. (2009). Spheres of trust: An empirical analysis of the foundations of particularised and generalised trust. European Journal of Political Research, 48(6), 782–803.
12.
GesthuizenM.van der MeerT.ScheepersP. (2008). Education and dimensions of social capital: Do educational effects differ due to educational expansion and social security expenditure?European Sociological Review, 24(5), 617–632.
13.
GlaeserE. L.LaibsonD. I.ScheinkmanJ. A.SoutterC. L. (2000). Measuring trust. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 811–846.
14.
GrosseJ. (2012). Kommer tid kommer tillit? Unga vuxnas och medelålders erfarenheter. Stockholm: Department of Social Work.
15.
GunnarsonC. (2008). Cultural warfare and trust: Fighting the mafia in Palermo. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
16.
HardinR. (1993). The street-level epistemology of trust. Politics & Society, 21(4), 505–529.
17.
HardinR. (2002). Trust and trustworthiness. New York, NY: Russel Sage Foundation.
18.
HolmbergS.RothsteinB. (2015). Hög mellanmänsklig tillit i Sverige—men inte bland alla [High level of interpersonal trust in Sweden – but not among everyone]. In BergströmA.JohanssonB.OscarssonH.OskarssonM. (Eds.), Fragment (pp. 37–46). Gothenburg: SOM.
19.
HolmbergS.WeibullL. (2004). Ju mer vi är tillsammans: 27 kapitel om politik, medier och samhälle: SOM-undersökningen 2003. Gothenburg: SOM.
20.
InglehartR. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
21.
KnackS.KeeferP. (1997). Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(4), 1251–1288.
22.
LanceeB.DronkersJ. (2011). Ethnic, religious and economic diversity in Dutch neighbourhoods: Explaining quality of contact with neighbours, trust in the neighbourhood and inter-ethnic trust. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(4), 597–618.
23.
LundmarkS. (2016). Generalized trust in surveys: From scales to dragons. Gothenburg: Department of Political Science.
24.
MillerA. S.MitamuraT. (2003). Are surveys on trust trustworthy?Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(1), 62–70.
25.
NannestadP. (2008). What have we learned about generalized trust, if anything?Annual Review of Political Science, 11(1), 413–436.
26.
OskarsonM.RothsteinB. (2012). Den sociala tilliten—håller vi på att tappa de unga? [Social trust – are we in the process of losing the young people?]. In OscarssonH.BergströmA. (Eds.), I framtidens skugga (pp. 539–544). Gothenburg: SOM.
27.
OstromE. (2000). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions of collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
PaxtonP.GlanvilleJ. L. (2015). Is trust rigid or malleable? A laboratory experiment. Social Psychology Quarterly, 78(2), 194–204.
29.
PutnamR. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
30.
RahnW. M.TransueJ. E. (1998). Social trust and value change: The decline of social capital in American youth, 1976–1995. Political Psychology, 19(3), 545–565.
31.
ReeskensT.HoogheM. (2008). Cross-cultural measurement equivalence of generalized trust: Evidence from the European Social Survey (2002 and 2004). Social Indicators Research, 85(3), 515–532.
32.
RotenbergK. J. (2004). Interpersonal trust across the lifespan. In International encyclopaedia of social and behavioral sciences (pp. 7866–7868). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
33.
RothsteinB. (2003). Sociala fällor och tillitens problem. Stockholm: SNS.
34.
RothsteinB. (2008). Den svåra konsten att lita på andra, att vara nöjd med sig själv och att vara ung [The difficult art of trusting others, being content with oneself, and being young]. In HolmbergS.WeibullL. (Eds.), Skilda världar. Göteborg: SOM.
35.
RothsteinB.UslanerE. M. (2005). All for all: Equality, corruption and social trust. World Politics, 58(3), 41–73.
36.
RotterJ. B. (1967). A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality, 35(4), 651–665.
37.
RotterJ. B. (1980). Interpersonal trust, trustworthiness and gullibility. American Psychologist, 35(1), 1–7.
38.
StolleD. (2002). Trusting strangers: The concept of generalized trust in perspective. ÖZP, 31(4), 397–412.
39.
SztompkaP. (1996). Trust and emerging democracy. International Sociology, 11(1), 37–62.
40.
TrägårdhL. WallmanLundåsenS.WollebækD.SvedbergL. (2013). Den svala svenska tilliten: Förutsättningar och utmaningar. Stockholm: SNS.
41.
UslanerE. M. (2002). The moral foundations of trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
42.
WollebaekD.Wallman LundåsenS.TrägårdhL. (2012). Three forms of interpersonal trust: Evidence from Swedish municipalities. Scandinavian Political Studies, 35(4), 319–346.
43.
YamagishiT.YamagishiM. (1994). Trust and commitment in the United States and in Japan. Motivation and Emotion, 18(2), 129–166.
