The Neighborhood Trust

Do you live in a neighborhood that promotes trust?

Though the question might sound odd, it is possible that where you live could have a definite impact on your level of generalized trust, or, the feeling that other people can be trusted.

Political scientists and sociologists have long known, for example, that African Americans have a much lower level of generalized trust than white Americans. What is less known are the factors that influence trust development among blacks and whites. These factors, particularly how differences in environment influence generalized trust, are the focus of a new study by Rice assistant professor of political science Melissa Marschall and Dietlind Stolle of McGill University. “Generalized trust is the broadest attitudinal measure that political scientists examine because it’s the basis for any kind of exchange,” Marschall says. “If you don’t trust other people, you’re less likely to engage in informal interactions and transactions.”

Previous studies have indicated that, for whites especially, neighborhood socioeconomic status is an important determinant of both their racial attitudes and their capacity to trust others. For their study, Marschall and Stolle focused on racial differences and the varied residential patterns of blacks and whites. “Our sample showed differences between African Americans and whites in terms of their level of generalized trust,” Marschall says. “About 56 percent of whites said that most other people can be trusted, whereas about 20 percent of blacks said they trust most other people.”

Marschall and Stolle wanted to know whether living in a racially homogeneous neighborhood versus a heterogeneous one made a difference by itself and how interracial contacts affect racial attitudes and generalized trust. “In the context of neighborhoods and racial issues,” Marschall says, “if people can overcome stereotypes and attitudes that are not grounded in any real experiences, then they may be able to overcome some problems that have plagued cities, such as the unwillingness of residents to live in multiracial neighborhoods.”

The researchers culled their data from the Detroit Area Study surveys, which include respondents in the three-county Detroit metropolitan area and are conducted regularly by the University of Michigan. They found that disparate factors influenced trust development for blacks and whites. “For whites, it tended to be individual-level variables, such as their attitudes and some demographic characteristics,” Marschall says. “The only neighborhood-level variable we found was the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood; higher socioeconomic levels had a positive effect on whites’ generalized trust.” The researchers also discovered that living in a racially heterogeneous neighborhood increased African Americans’ capacity for generalized trust, particularly if they were involved in formal or informal social interaction.

Some other studies in economics and political science suggest that diversity in general breeds less trust, but Marschall and her colleague argue that the definition and measurement of context is integral to this sort of study. “Social interactions among whites don’t influence their level of trust, but among blacks, they do,” she says. “So if you put together blacks and whites and try to come up with a model to explain their level of generalized trust, it’s probably not going to be very robust. Based on our findings, the factors that influence trust development for blacks and whites are different.”

Future research, she says, will have to analyze African Americans and whites separately.

The researchers’ findings were published an article titled “Race and the City: Neighborhood Context and the Development of Generalized Trust” in the June 2004 issue of Political Behavior.