A genetic basis for social trust?
A genetic basis for social trust?
A propensity to believe that fellow citizens will not act against our interests in social and economic transactions has been identified as key to the effective functioning of democratic polities. Yet the causes of this type of ‘generalized’ or ‘social’ trust are far from clear. To date, researchers within the social and political 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.
205-230
Sturgis, Peter
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Read, Sanna
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Hatemi, Peter K.
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Zhu, Gu
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Trull, Tim
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Wright, Margaret J.
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Martin, Nicholas G.
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June 2010
Sturgis, Peter
b9f6b40c-50d2-4117-805a-577b501d0b3c
Read, Sanna
a26ab020-4465-43bd-9631-7aea2b8f8d94
Hatemi, Peter K.
bb2ff0c5-002e-4b29-a8fc-bbfd89461471
Zhu, Gu
93547bdd-ab1a-4918-a7b3-468bcb5b5f83
Trull, Tim
26120ec2-60f9-4a5d-9f72-2437896f1075
Wright, Margaret J.
9ca06840-2f9d-41c3-8a5c-cd3b4bd2515f
Martin, Nicholas G.
fe228d93-a4d7-45b8-9c7b-1e0328fcb011
Sturgis, Peter, Read, Sanna, Hatemi, Peter K., Zhu, Gu, Trull, Tim, Wright, Margaret J. and Martin, Nicholas G.
(2010)
A genetic basis for social trust?
Political Behavior, 32 (2), .
(doi:10.1007/s11109-009-9101-5).
Abstract
A propensity to believe that fellow citizens will not act against our interests in social and economic transactions has been identified as key to the effective functioning of democratic polities. Yet the causes of this type of ‘generalized’ or ‘social’ trust are far from clear. To date, researchers within the social and political 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.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 8 December 2009
Published date: June 2010
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 80167
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/80167
ISSN: 0190-9320
PURE UUID: eb040d7a-6b03-40fe-beac-958ee6e25300
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Date deposited: 24 Mar 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 00:35
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Contributors
Author:
Peter Sturgis
Author:
Sanna Read
Author:
Peter K. Hatemi
Author:
Gu Zhu
Author:
Tim Trull
Author:
Margaret J. Wright
Author:
Nicholas G. Martin
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