Powerlessness and the Amplification of Threat: Neighborhood Disadvantage, Disorder, and Mistrust

By C. Ross, J. Mirowsky, Shana L. Pribesh. American Sociological Review, 2001

654 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A theory of trust is developed and tested. The theory posits that mistrust develops in neighborhoods where resources are scarce and threat is common, and among individuals with few resources and who feel powerless to avoid or manage the threat. Perceived neighborhood disorder, common in disadvantaged neighborhoods where disadvantaged individuals live, influences mistrust directly and indirectly by increasing residents’ perceptions of powerlessness which in turn amplify disorder's effect on mistrust. The hypotheses are examined using the Community, Crime, and Health data, a 1995 survey of a representative sample of 2,482 Illinois residents with linked data on neighborhoods. Net of individual disadvantage, residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods have low levels of trust as a result of high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods: People who report living in neighborhoods with high levels of crime, vandalism, graffiti, danger, noise, and drugs are more mistrusting. The sense of powerlessness, which is common in such neighborhoods, amplifies the effect of neighborhood disorder on mistrust.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/05e83364c9ac0a3d892b95667e6d8202f0e647c1

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In General Health Professions

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Citations in the corpus

Social norms in distressed neighbourhoods: testing the Wilson hypothesis (2003, background): “Overall, the analysis gives some support for the few propositions derived from the model suggested by Ross et al. (2001).”
Education, Learned Effectiveness and Health. (2005, background): “Structural amplification concentrates poor health in a minority of persons with multiple related disadvantages (Ross et al., 2001).”
Ethnic, Religious and Economic Diversity in Dutch Neighbourhoods: Explaining Quality of Contact with Neighbours, Trust in the Neighbourhood and Inter-Ethnic Trust (2011, background): “For example, an economically disadvantaged neighbourhood is a main factor in eroding inter-personal trust (Ross et al. 2001) and generalised trust (Alesina and La Ferrara 2002; Marschall and Stolle 2004).”
Über-Alienated: Powerless and Alone in the Gig Economy (2021, methodology): “Following previous approaches to measuring powerlessness (see Ross et al., 2001), responses were reverse coded and averaged so that higher scores reflect a greater sense of powerlessness (C-QWELS I and II Cronbach’s alphas¼ .83).”
Creating networks for survival and mobility: social capital among African-American and Latin-American low-income mothers (2003, background): “Moreover, consistent with the literature on community mistrust, respondents express a great deal of suspicion towards neighbors and are cautious about making friends (Ross, Mirowsky, and Pribesh 2001).”
Dimensions of Social Capital and Rates of Criminal Homicide (2004, methodology): “Drawing on the structural amplification theory of mistrust (Mirowsky and Ross 1983; Ross et al. 2001), we use as an instrument in our social trust equation a variable that taps macrolevel variation in subjective alienation. Ross et al. (2001) develop a theoretical model of mistrust that highlights t”
Neighborhood disadvantage and mental health: The role of neighborhood disorder and social relationships (2010, background): “Niehgborhoods with high levels of disorder are characterized by a weak social control with observable signs and visible cues (Ross and Mirowsky, 2001; Ross et al., 2001; Skogan, 1990).”
Trust in the Police (2015, background): “Similarly, Ross, Mirowsky, and Pribesh (2001) showed that people who live in communities where the threat of victimization is common are more likely to feel powerless in the fight against becoming a victim.”
Life Course Trajectories of Perceived Control and Their Relationship to Education1 (2007, methodology): “The index has been used in several previous surveys (Mirowsky 1995; Mirowsky et al. 1996; Ross et al. 2001; Schieman 2001; Wolinsky et al. 2003; Wolinsky et al. 2004).”
Understanding Relationship Marketing and Loyalty Program Effectiveness in Global Markets (2015, positive): “Second, insecurity reduces perceptions of personal power, which subsequently amplify the effects of disorder on mistrust (Ross, Mirowsky, and Pribesh 2001).”