A propensity to believe that fellow citizens will not act against our
interests in social and economic transactions has been identified as key
to a host of favourable outcomes for both individuals and society. Yet
the causes of this type of generalized or social trust are far from
clear. To date, researchers within the social sciences have
focused almost exclusively on social-developmental and
political/institutional features of individuals and societies as the
primary causal influences. In this paper we investigate the intriguing
possibility that social trust might have a genetic, as well as an
environmental basis. We use data collected from samples of monozygotic
and dizygotic twins to estimate the additive genetic, shared
environmental, and non-shared environmental components of trust. Our
results show that the majority of the variance in a multi-item trust
scale is accounted for by an additive genetic factor. On the other hand,
the environmental influences experienced in common by sibling pairs have
no discernable effect; the only environmental influences appear to be
those that are unique to the individual. Our findings problematise the
widely held view that the development of social trust occurs through a
process of familial socialization at an early stage of the life course.
Presented by:
Sanna Read (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London)
Date & time:
October 6, 2008 3:00 pm - October 5, 2008 11:00 pm
External seminars home