Trust and social progress: Discussion

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Trust and social progress Discussion

• Nigel Harvey
• University College London

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Data types favoured by different social science
disciplines

• Sociologists tend to focus on verbal data and
  statements (responses to surveys and polls,
  narratives, discourse analysis, etc).
• Economists, particularly micro-economists, prefer
  to use non-verbal behavioural data (revealed
  preferences, purchasing behaviour).
• Psychologists are interested in the relations
  between these two types of data (implicit versus
  explicit learning, automatic versus controlled
  processing).

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Trust and happiness

• Stated community trust (ratings of agreement with
  In general, people can be trusted) predicts
  stated happiness (ratings of life satisfaction).
• Does the same relation hold between revealed
  trust (eg willingness to act on someones advice)
  and revealed happiness (eg prescribing levels of
  anti-depressants)?
• If it does not, the relation between stated
  variables may reflect peoples lay theories of
  how a third variable (eg economic conditions)
  affects both their community trust and their
  happiness.

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Lay theories

• To say that the relation reflects lay theories is
  not to belittle its importance. Such theories can
  influence not only the content of verbal
  behaviour (responses to polls, interviews,
  conversations) but also verbally mediated
  non-verbal behaviour.
• The problem for psychologists is to determine the
  extent to which non-verbal behaviours (voting,
  large purchases) are verbally mediated and
  influenced by lay theories of how society works.
• What is the status of rational expectations?

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Stated versus revealed trust

• Onora ONeill, in her 2002 Reith lectures, says
  We may end up claiming not to trust, and yet,
  for practical purposes place trust in the very
  sources we claim not to trust. There is a
  dissociation between stated and revealed trust.
• RL points out that, across countries, stated
  trust correlates 0.65 with the proportion of
  dropped wallets containing owners addresses that
  are returned. But the latter is a measure not of
  revealed trust but of revealed trustworthiness.

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Determinants of stated trust

• Earle Cvetkovich (1999) argued that trust
  placement is non-rational (ie not based on
  evidence of trustworthiness).
• They found peoples judgments of trust in an
  agency correlated 0.66 with how much they shared
  values with it. They assume assessment of shared
  values is based on value-bearing narratives
  produced by the agency
• We (Twyman et al, 2005) have replicated this with
  risks associated with sports, jobs, drugs and
  travel.

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Determinants of revealed trust

• The greatest trust between man and man is the
  trust of giving counsel (Francis Bacon) the
  extent to which we use advice from one source
  rather than another reveals our relative trust in
  those sources.
• Revealed trust has a rational basis. We are more
  likely to use advice from sources who have given
  better advice in the past (Harvey Fischer,
  1997). Lack of trust in government advice about
  MMR can be seen in the light of the failure of
  that advice in the context of BSE.

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Relation between stated and revealed trust

• Different factors appear to determine levels of
  stated and revealed trust. The extent to which
  they coincide is an empirical question.
• We compared stated and revealed trust in advice
  about risks received from government agencies and
  consumer support services.
• When the government agency gave better advice,
  revealed trust in it was higher than stated trust
  in it. When it gave worse advice, revealed trust
  was lower than stated trust in it.

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Do people know what will make them happy?

• Various studies (eg Kahneman Snell, 1990)
  suggest that people do not know what will make
  them happy. People assessing how their liking of
  plain yogurt would change after eight daily
  servings thought it would decrease. In fact, it
  increased.
• People asked what they would like to eat for
  seven days in advance select variety whereas
  those asked on each day do not.
• These results suggest people have lay theories of
  happiness that are not always appropriate.

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Inappropriate lay theories of happiness

• Schkade Kahneman (1998) asked two groups
  (Midwesterners Californians) to assess how
  satisfied they were with their lives in general
  and with certain aspects in particular (eg job
  prospects, climate). Two other groups did the
  same for people in the other place.
• Happiness of Californians and Midwesterners did
  not differ. But Midwesterners thought
  Californians would be happier. They overrated the
  importance Californians gave to climate and
  culture. Inappropriate lay theories may influence
  migration.

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Context in happiness judgments The focussing
illusion

• Wilson et al (2000) asked people to judge how
  happy they would be if their favourite football
  team won a future fixture. After their team had
  won, they asked them how happy they were.
• People had overestimated how happy they would be
  and how long their elation would last.
• Asking them to fill in a diary before the game
  detailing what they would be doing after it
  reduced the effect. They realised other events
  would influence their happiness besides the game
  result.
• Focussing occurs with retrospective judgments too.

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Discussion points

• Value of different types of data and some
  knowledge of the relation between them.
• Onora ONeills claims about dissociations
  between revealed and stated trust.
• Effects of context and lay theories on validity
  of survey results.
• Cross-cultural differences in ways of dealing
  with lack of trust and their relation to
  happiness.