Source -> https://pluralofyou.org/trust-among-americans-not-over-yet/
Americans are suffering more than ever from a lack of trust in their fellow humans. Those are findings from the latest General Social Survey, a sociological survey that has tracked changes in American society since 1972. Trust is crucial for a society because people are unwilling or unable to put their faith in one another without it.
According to the GSS, 25.3 percent of respondents in 2022—representing 1 in 4 Americans—said that “most people can be trusted”. This is down from 46.8 percent of respondents in 1972. In a previous survey known as the DDB Needham Life Style Survey, Americans’ trust peaked in 1967–1968, when 56% of survey respondents agreed that “most people can be trusted.” You can see the trends between 1972 and 2022 below.
Very interesting graphs within that article. It shows how much damage capitalism has done to Burgerland’s citizens in terms atomization and alienation.
Thank you for the context. It answers the first question I had to a degree (although there’s a big difference between trusting someone to return a wallet and, say, trusting someone to honestly handle a large amount of money), but I don’t think it gets at the second and third questions. Those deal with the objective issue of how many people would actually return a lost wallet, and if that’s changed over time.
In other words, is this change in sentiment tied to changing real-world conditions? If people today are about as trustworthy as they were in 1972 but everyone is more pessimistic about it, that’s quite a different story than if people are actually less trustworthy today and the common sentiment simply reflects that. Or maybe people have become more trustworthy over time and the sentiment is entirely detached from reality.
I think testing that reality would be an interesting study, but, it’s defiantly not what this survey is doing. This is simply showing the change in perception of peoples trustworthiness. If that aligns for reality is unknown.
From my perspective, unless you meant by real-world conditions as economic or material, this is a no.
After looking at what the author used to explain the decline of public trust which mentions the following: “Race, however, is the most significant factor I’ve found that correlates with the decline”, he doesn’t mentions the material conditions behind why race is an important factor. He also expands this in the following excerpt: