Trust is down, worldwide. In India, Iran, Indonesia and Nigeria, less than 15% say that ‘most people can be trusted’. What’s going on?
This is a two-part essay, examining the causes and effects of falling trust.
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What’s causing the decline in trust?
To answer this question, we need to understand both cross-cultural variation and long-run socio-economic trends. Through my global-historical comparative research, I suggest several likely mechanisms:
Generalised distrust is correlated with strong family bonds
Poorer countries have rapidly urbanised at a lower level of income
Rule of law varies worldwide
Political contestation and growing polarisation
Online connectivity has boomed, and is increasingly negative
Culture is the first point of global variation. Strong family ties seem to be a substitute for generalised trust. A wealth of research suggests that the two are negatively correlated: one either trusts family or wider society. Scandinavia is characterised by weak family bonds and high generalised trust, whereas India has strong family bonds and low generalised trust.
Poorer countries have rapidly urbanised at a lower level of income. Cash-strapped municipalities now struggle to provide rule of law and effective services. City-dwellers are thus surrounded by diverse multitudes whom they are disposed to distrust.
Weak rule of law enables impunity for violence and exploitation. If one suspects thieves, tricksters, or sexual harassment, then cities are incredibly stressful. And where criminal street gangs murder with impunity, there is every reason for trepidation. Abuse runs rampant, wolves howl in the shadows.
Political movements vilify their foes. Group competitions are zero sum: all sides compete for supporters’ investment and loyalty. Enemies are figuratively tarred and feathered, derided as demons. In this respect, U.S. political fundraisers have much in common with Uzbekistan’s YouTube imams: hyping up external threats, while offering themselves as saviours. Political polarisation is growing worldwide.
Online connectivity is another major global trend, increasingly characterised by negativity, out-group animosity and moral outrage.
Now let me sketch the argument in more depth, starting with culture.
Kinship Intensity
Duman Bahrami-Rad and colleagues have mapped pre-colonial variation in kinship intensity, by combining data from the Ethnographic Atlas (coding 12000 societies) and global language phylogenies. Their Kinship Intensity Index tracks norms regarding cousin marriage, polygamy, co-residence of extended families, lineage organisation, and community organisation. The Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and South Asia all score highly.
In kinship societies, everyday life revolves around the family. Whether starting a business, seeking help in a crisis, celebrating festivities, or simply hanging out at weekends, such communities call on their kin. As a young entrepreneur explained to me in small town Uzbekistan, he trusts and hires family. Outsiders lack loyalty, they’ll leave if they get a better offer, so all that investment is lost.
Loyalty to kin is self-perpetuating - through praise, habits, and policing. Bollywood movies celebrate sons who honour and provide for their parents. This message is reinforced in daily life, aunts and uncles praise dutiful sons. Kinship loyalty is also learned through practice. If families habitually cooperate, exchange small favours and spend time with each other, they feel more comfortable with kin. Distrust in outsiders means that others are rarely given the opportunity to correct these priors.
‘Paradise lies at the mother’s feet’ is a common expression in Pakistan. Having internalised this ethic, disloyalty triggers psychological anguish. Stomachs knot in guilt. A young engineer from Pakistan was deeply in love, but when his family called on him to end the relationship and marry his cousin, he dutifully obliged. Disloyalty to kin is also heavily punished. Indian sons who disobey their parents may be vilified as pariahs. Strong familial policing means that everyone is motivated to shirk on outsiders. This reinforces strong trust in kin and distrust of outsiders.
Over the past century, the world has undergone rapid urbanisation. This seismic shift in population density and diversity may have significant implications for social trust. However, to the best of my knowledge, there is a paucity of research examining the relationship between urbanisation and trust, along with potential mediating factors.
In close-knit communities, there is strong surveillance
First consider this counter-factual. Everyone knows your name, your business, and your mother. Whatever happens, others will soon discover. So even if generalised trust is low, people may still be confident that good behaviour will be policed through community monitoring. Interdependence, social policing and threats of ostracism all motivate conformity. As a young woman from Haryana remarked, within three minutes of leaving her home, news of her whereabouts will soon reach her parents.
My home in small town Alabama, where my bike remained unlocked
Madhubani, a town in Bihar, India
Women in a village northern Bihar, where everyone knows each other. They were extremely kind, and also took about 200 photos of me.
Men chatting together in the village, Northern Bihar. My photo
In mid-19th century London and Paris, injustice was pervasive - as highlighted by Charles Dickens, Eugène Sue and Victor Hugo. “Bleak House” depicts a society rife with corruption, as individuals exploit and deceive one another for personal gain. The character of Mr. Tulkinghorn, a shrewd and manipulative lawyer, gathers secrets to manipulate others, contributing to widespread wariness. “Les Mystères de Paris” by Eugène Sue, published in 1842-43 similarly gained popularity for shining a light on rampant criminality, corruption and deprivation. “Les Misérables” is now a Hollywood epic, but Hugo’s popular portrayal of a downtrodden underclass was actually based on careful ethnographic research.
In the early 1920s, Western cities enjoyed both economic boom and improved governance. England’s homicides had halved. Cities were celebrated as spaces of anonymity, escapism, and individuality. “Sister Carrie” (1900) by Theodore Dreiser tells the story of an 18-year-old who moves from rural Wisconsin to Chicago. Despite harsh conditions at the factory, Carrie is tremendously excited by her newfound freedoms:
“The great streets, the vast buildings, the brilliant shops and stores, the whole atmosphere of life there, seemed a strange thing to her, and she looked wide-eyed”
Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 avant-garde silent film, “Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis” similarly revels in the city's energy, excitement, and freedom.
Art reflected the spirit of the age. The Roaring Twenties were a triumphant age of artistic experimentation and individualism. 1920s Berlin experienced a cultural renaissance, becoming a hub of avant-garde art and liberalism. Jazz, literature, intellectual critique and art likewise blossomed in the Harlem Renaissance. 1920s Paris, meanwhile, was known as the “Les Années Folles” (The Crazy Years).
When rule of law worsens, cities are rife with distrust
In the 1970s, crime waves plagued major American cities like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. Fearing for their safety, residents fled, leading to a 10% population decline. As Glaesar aptly notes,
Fear and suspicion were also rampant under totalitarian communism. ‘Enemies of the people’ were sentenced to forced labour camps (Gulags). A single misstep, even without formal charges, could result in arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and brutal torture. While Manhattanites lived in fear of muggers, East Berliners lived in constant dread of the Stasi. The only difference was it was much harder to leave. The legacy of this era is still evident in post-communist countries, which consistently scoree highly on measures of societal distrust.
As the USSR collapsed, Russian cities experienced a surge in violent street gangs. Living in the shadow of organised crime, working class men have learnt to project brutal dominance. A ‘real Russian muzhik’ (man) is tough, strong and patriotic. Street youths may upload videos of their fights: impressing peers with aggressive physical prowess. Bonds of brotherhood became paramount - as shown in the popular 2023 Russian television series, “The Boy’s World: Blood on the Asphalt”.
Many Western cities have since undergone a remarkable transformation, thanks to institutional improvements in the rule of law, enhanced public sector capacity, and a rising demand for skilled jobs.
Perceived security is so strong in high-skilled, cosmopolitan Toronto that residents confidently walk the streets with their expensive smartphones on display.
In ‘Nuit Blanche’, communities from all over the world share their art, while Toronto’s municipal government maintains public safety. This multi-cultural overnight art exhibition is a testament to how strong institutions can facilitate diverse connections. At the Somali exhibition, I forged a great friendship with a refugee, who kindly invited me to Islamic cultural events and a local mosque.
Even if countries with strong family bonds tend to have lower levels of trust, Toronto suggests that this can be compensated for effective urban management.
The Somali art exhibition at Toronto’s ‘Nuit Blanche’ (my photo)
The Somali art exhibition at Toronto’s ‘Nuit Blanche’ (my photo)
In 1923, the shocking “Lincheng Outrage” saw bandits hijack a train in Shandong province, abducting over 300 passengers, exposing lawlessness. Classic novels like Liu E's “The Travels of Lao Can” and Lao She's “Rickshaw Boy” captured widespread themes of urban hardship, hypocrisy, exploitation, manipulation and despair.
Rule of law has since improved. As detailed by Yuen Yuen Ang, Chinese bureaucrats iteratively improved governance to attract inward investment. Governance and growth both improved a co-evolutionary process.
Today, China is commonly described as a ‘surveillance state’. While many express concerns about facial recognition and authoritarianism, the flip side of the coin is low homicides. Abductions, burglaries and homicides are now rare. A woman from Shanghai shared with me that her grandparents often worried about children being kidnapped, but this is no longer the case thanks to strong policing.
None of this is to imply that Chinese courts are impartial. I merely echo a standard line from Economics: contract enforcement can reduce uncertainty.
The relationship between urbanisation and development has changed over time. Back in 1960, poorer countries were generally more rural. Fast-forward to 2010, the correlation between wealth and urbanisation was weakening. Ed Glaeser shows that countries are now urbanising at much lower levels of wealth. Most poor countries are now more urban than Korea was in 1960.
In 1900, city size was a robust predictor of living standards. Amsterdam, London and New York grew in relative size as they developed, and there was a commensurate improvement in living standards. By contrast, cities like Delhi, Jakarta and Lagos transitioned from being small and poor to enormous megacities, and yet their ranked living standards remain low.
Urbanisation can create benefits (like innovation), but it also comes with downsides. Negative externalities include contagious disease, congestion, and crime. Cash-strapped municipalities then face a major challenge, because urban populations are increasingly large, while resources are restricted. Without strong urban finances, municipalities have less capacity to provide core services and enforce rule of law. As Glaeser warns, this creates all the problems of the density and diversity, without the requisite institutions.
The view from my friend’s home in Dharavi, Mumbai (my photo)
Now let me illustrate these tensions with examples from Nigeria, Zambia, Pakistan and Latin America.
Nigeria is a prime case of ‘poor urbanisation’. It is mostly urban, yet remains poor. Lagos now comprises 17 million people (dwarfing London). City governments are run on a shoe-string, lacking fiscal capacity. The criminal justice system is stretched, and rife with impunity. In recent Afrobarometer opinion polls,
Without rule of law, commerce then becomes risky. Nava Ashraf and colleagues find that Zambian female entrepreneurs
‘collaborate less, learn less from fellow entrepreneurs, earn less and segregate into industries with more women, but gender differences are ameliorated when women have access to adjudicating institutions, such as Lusaka's “Market Chiefs” who are empowered to adjudicate small commercial disputes’.
Zambian traders (my photo)
Karachi is now home to 14 million people - battered by inflation and impoverishment, without rule of law or essential services. 250 people have recently been shot dead by armed robbers. Even more people died in factory fires.
Latin America accounts for 8% of the world’s population, but 36% of homicides. In her tremendous book, “Homicidal Ecologies”, Deborah Yashar shows that homicides are highest in unpoliced territories where criminal gangs compete over drug routes. Violence thus results from the conjunction of
Expanding illicit economies and high-stakes incentives for control of trade;
Weak/complicit states
High competition between rival organisations.
Yashar suggests that homicides are much lower in Nicaragua due to institutional improvements in policing, with strong prevention and pro-active community policing. Stronger police presence makes Nicaragua less attractive to drug traffickers. El Salvador, by contrast, saw an eruption in criminality.
High homicides may help explain why Latin America and the Caribbean has always scored so poorly for social trust, and also why it’s getting worse. Only 15% of Latin American and Caribbeans say ‘most people can be trusted’.
Keefer and Scartascini 2022, based on Latinobarometer Survey 2010-2020
Political Competition
Thus far I have suggested that generalised distrust is exacerbated by cross-national variation in strong family bonds, as well as growing urbanisation amid weak policing. Political competition and media connectivity may be fuelling the fire.
As everyone knows, U.S. politics and media have become increasingly polarised. When progressives rallied for Civil Rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, conservatives coalesced to form the Moral Majority. By hyping up external threats, each side seeks to mobilise supporters and fundraise for increasingly expensive elections. Democrat campaigners amp up the urgency, warning about the dangers of a Trump presidency, while Republicans emphasise illegal immigration.
In the bid for power, Trump has told thousands of lies. Fact-checkers from the Washington Post and CNN detail repeated falsehoods. After the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the election was ‘stolen’ from him due to widespread voter fraud. In January 2021, emboldened supporters tried to seize the Capitol.
Hateful political rhetoric is hardly unique to America. BJP Karnataka recently tweeted a video alleging that Muslims would steal all the public funds allocated to Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Castes.
Political polarisation has increased more widely, especially in Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. These trends are global, rising in the past decade.
China, curiously, has bucked this trend and trust remains high. One speculative possibility is that totalitarian surveillance has minimised both low-level violence and also the permissibility of political contestation. China’s netizens can vent frustrations against peers, but are never allowed to amalgamate or threaten social stability. Seniority within the party is not achieved by taking to their airwaves and publicly damning one’s adversaries, but carefully securing alliances (guanxi) and top-down targets.
Media horror stories may be exacerbating mistrust
Almost 5 billion people now use social media, typically spending 150 minutes a day browsing and posting. Hyper-connectivity means that we are constantly exposed to horrific events occurring across the globe. News organisations vie for our attention by highlighting tragedies, which may trigger anxiety even if they occur thousands of miles away. Politicians and cultural entrepreneurs often exploit distant threats to rally their supporters, encouraging defensive mobilisation and investment.
Research on U.S. news media and social media users suggests that the technological revolution in online connectivity is increasingly characterised by aggression, outrage and out-group animosity.
U.S. Media has become increasingly Angry and Negative
Over the past two decades, US media has become much more negative and morally outraged. David Rozado and colleagues analysed sentiment and emotion in 23 million headlines from popular 47 news media outlets. Headlines are increasingly characterised by anger, fear, sadness and disgust.
‘The solid blue line shows the average yearly sentiment of headlines across 47 popular news media outlets. Shaded area indicates the 95% confidence interval around the mean. A statistical test for the null hypothesis of zero slope is shown on the bottom left of the plot. The percentage change on average yearly sentiment across outlets between 2000 and 2019 is shown on the top left’ Rozado et al 2023.
‘Average yearly prevalence of news articles headlines denoting different types of emotionality in 47 popular news media outlets. Shaded gray area indicates the 95% confidence interval around the mean. Statistical tests for the null hypothesis of zero slope are shown on the bottom left of each subplot. Reported p-values have been Bonferroni-corrected for multiple comparisons. Percentage changes between 2000 and 2019 are on the top left of each subplot.’ Rozado et al 2023
Users Reward Hostility and Moral Outrage
The proliferation of negative media cannot be solely attributed to news corporations or corporate algorithms. Humans appear inherently drawn to content that evokes strong emotions, such as negativity, out-group animosity, and moral outrage. Numerous experiments have shown that individuals are easily triggered by moral emotions, finding satisfaction in the misfortune of their opponents, demonstrating group loyalty, and vilifying adversaries. News organisations, cultural entrepreneurs and ordinary users then respond to widespread demand for moral outrage.
Social media seems to amplify perceived ideological polarisation
Claire Robertson and colleagues show that the most active media users tend to be political extremists, while moderates are more muted. Scrolling online, Americans encounter vast ideological polarisation (even if they’re only seeing the tips of two peaks). Extremist content may seem outrageous and bewildering, triggering a counter-reaction of aggressive hostility, which gets turbo-charged by algorithms.
‘Figure demonstrating how the invisibility of moderate opinion changes the distribution of political opinions online. Data in all panels show data from the American National Election Services from 2016. Participants answered the question “what is your political ideology?” on a likert scale ranging from 1 (Extremely Liberal) to 8 (Extremely Conservative). Panel A shows the distribution of offline opinion as reported from ANES. Panel B shows the gray box representing the “filtering out” of moderate opinions on social media. Panel C shows the perceived distribution of political opinion online after filtering out moderate opinions’. Robertson et al 2024
‘In a sample of North American adults. (a) People were more likely to learn about immoral acts online than in person or via traditional forms of media (print, television, and radio). The figure displays the percentage of total reported moral/immoral acts that were learned about in each setting. (b) Immoral acts encountered online evoked more outrage than immoral acts encountered in person or via traditional forms of media. Error bars represent S.E.M.. (Figure adapted from Crockett, 2017).’ Roberton et al 2024
Online connectivity increases the salience of distant threats
Quantitative researchers typically study socio-economic trends and cross-sectional variation by regressing individual- or place-based characteristics. However, given rising online connectivity, we also need to recognise the salience of distant threats. We see this play out in both German politics and Indian sexual assaults.
In the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack anywhere in Europe, German Twitter users increasingly focused on immigrants and Muslims. This shift in discourse correlates with increased support for the far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Over in India, media reporting tends sensationalise stories related to sexual violence, potentially worsening pre-existing fears. Browsing the internet in May 2024, an Indian father may encounter the following headlines,
The 2012 Delhi gang rape shook the nation, reinforcing widespread fears. In my interviews across six Indian states, many women told me that they had decided not to study in Delhi because they were scared:
“Our national capital is unsafe for women, no matter what caste or community you are from. And if anything happens, shame on you, blame on you” – Eesha, Delhi (Dalit journalist).
“After 2012, we felt helpless and scared to go out after dark. I didn’t want to go to Delhi to study nor did any of my friends” - Lakshmi, student from Bangalore.
Media reports of sexualised violence thus seem to perpetuate pre-existing fears of male strangers and presumptions of state incompetence. Repeating a major theme of 1980s Bollywood, contemporary reporting stokes fears of sexual predators. As Poulami Roychowdhury details, the Indian criminal justice is already over-stretched and systematically sexist. Rapes are repeatedly ignored. Given strong family bonds, unrelated men are invariably distrusted. From this low baseline, media reporting fuels further distrust. The technological revolution means that Indians are increasingly exposed to stories gruesome brutality.
As long as parents fear for their daughters’ safety, public spaces will remain male dominated. If women are nervous to venture out, they may not gain the confidence, capacities and friendships that help men navigate social and economic relationships.
Generalised trust is falling worldwide. The question is why? Through my globally comparative historical research, I see several, interconnected mechanisms:
Distrust in strangers is correlated with strong family bonds. Loyalty to kin is reinforced through cultural celebrations and preferences for family firms. This helps explain cross-cultural variation.
Poorer countries are urbanising at a lower level of wealth, impeding state capacity for rule of law and core services.
Weak rule of law exacerbates distrust.
Political polarisation is growing, as each side seeks to rally supporters by hyping up threats and demonising foes;
Online connectivity is rising; it is increasingly negative and hostile; potentially exacerbating fears.
My theory predicts that trust is highest in societies with weak family bonds and/ or effective states, but lower and falling where there is ‘poor urbanisation’, weak rule of law, political contestation, and online connectivity.
Stay tuned for my next post on how ‘poor urbanisation’ may be generating a second Axial Age.
The view from my friend’s home in Dharavi, my photo
Postscript. I was attacked in Oaxaca, in 2023. A man tried to grab my phone, but I (foolishly) resisted, so he threw me to the floor, slammed my head against the stone, then punched my face with his fist. Lying on my back, I double kicked him in the stomach, propelling him off. He then grabbed a large serrated knife, and lunged down at me. Swiftly avoiding this second attack, I sprinted eye. To him, I was probably just an obstacle to a valuable commodity. Bleeding, I called for help, but to little avail. Finally, a kind young woman came to my aid - but a year later she was similarly mugged. Thankfully, I could repay her generosity and send some support for her baby.
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I would make one minor suggestion about the persistence of social trust in China. It seems to me it's not just a matter of surveillance and low crime rates; a more important factor might be centralized control of the media narrative.
Long before smartphones existed, when I was first learning to read Chinese by translating newspaper articles, it was clear how this worked. It wasn't simply that criticism of the state was suppressed; the papers avoided anything that might acknowledge social conflict or even stimulate strong negative emotions in their readers. (They weren't really commercialized at that point so there wasn't much of a countervailing market incentive.)
It might sound paradoxical but I think you saw this most clearly in the way China handled international news. Every official newspaper limited it to a single page and presented the politics of other countries in a simplistic way, highlighting their internal conflicts without fully explaining or contextualizing them. So the foreign coverage acted as a foil, reinforcing the idea that other places faced endless problems while China was stable and prosperous.
This was all a product of authoritarianism, but before the rise of the internet you often saw a parallel style in democratic states. I can't help thinking of the atmosphere of the American media in the 1950s and 1960s: a time when public trust, including trust in the government, was (unjustifiably) very high, and when the mainstream press routinely self-censored when it came to things like criticism of US foreign policy or the personal misconduct of politicians.
The strength of China's internet controls has made it one of the few places where those media norms are still mostly upheld. Surely that's a key factor in continuing high social trust?
This is fantastic!
I would make one minor suggestion about the persistence of social trust in China. It seems to me it's not just a matter of surveillance and low crime rates; a more important factor might be centralized control of the media narrative.
Long before smartphones existed, when I was first learning to read Chinese by translating newspaper articles, it was clear how this worked. It wasn't simply that criticism of the state was suppressed; the papers avoided anything that might acknowledge social conflict or even stimulate strong negative emotions in their readers. (They weren't really commercialized at that point so there wasn't much of a countervailing market incentive.)
It might sound paradoxical but I think you saw this most clearly in the way China handled international news. Every official newspaper limited it to a single page and presented the politics of other countries in a simplistic way, highlighting their internal conflicts without fully explaining or contextualizing them. So the foreign coverage acted as a foil, reinforcing the idea that other places faced endless problems while China was stable and prosperous.
This was all a product of authoritarianism, but before the rise of the internet you often saw a parallel style in democratic states. I can't help thinking of the atmosphere of the American media in the 1950s and 1960s: a time when public trust, including trust in the government, was (unjustifiably) very high, and when the mainstream press routinely self-censored when it came to things like criticism of US foreign policy or the personal misconduct of politicians.
The strength of China's internet controls has made it one of the few places where those media norms are still mostly upheld. Surely that's a key factor in continuing high social trust?
Strong family bonds effect on trust is mediated by low-trust vs high-trust environment, according to this paper:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01902725231162074
The quality of institutions is falling worldwide and this might be why generalised distrust is correlated with strong family bonds