Trust and Wellbeing

By John F. Helliwell, Shun Wang. 2010

385 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper presents new evidence linking trust and subjective wellbeing, based primarily on data from the Gallup World Poll and cycle 17 of the Canadian General Social Survey (GSS17). Because several of the general explanations for subjective wellbeing examined here show large and significant linkages to both household income and various measures of trust, it is possible to estimate income-equivalent compensating differentials for different types of trust. Measures of trust studied include general social trust, trust in management, trust in co-workers, trust in neighbours, and trust in police. In addition, some Canadian surveys and the Gallup World Poll ask respondents to estimate the chances that a lost wallet would be returned to them if found by different individuals, including neighbours, police and strangers. Our results reveal strong linkages between several trust measures and subjective well-being, as well as strong linkages between social trust and two major global causes of death—suicides and traffic fatalities. This suggests the value of learning more about how trust can be built and maintained, or repaired where it has been damaged. We therefore use data from the Canadian GSS17 to analyze personal and neighbourhood characteristics, including education, migration history, and mobility, that help explain differences in trust levels among individuals. Finally, by combining data from new dropped-wallet field experiments with survey answers about the expected return of a dropped wallet, we show that wallets are far more likely to be returned, even by strangers in large cities, than people expect.

Subfields: Health, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7e6e987ef91b76e7b32d51809c94c036cb2ac37c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health

1. Kevin Kam Fung So
2. Robin Nunkoo

In Social Psychology

1. Kevin Kam Fung So
2. Robin Nunkoo
3. K. Woosnam

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Kevin Kam Fung So
2. Robin Nunkoo
3. D. Gursoy
4. K. Woosnam
5. Haywantee Ramkissoon
6. Manuel Alector Ribeiro

Citations in the corpus

• Growing to Trust (2015, neutral): “…beings to derive support, comfort, and pleasure from others (Bowlby, 1969, 1988; Erikson, 1968; Sroufe, Coffino, & Carlson, 2010); facilitates prosocial behavior; and makes such behavior beneficial for well-being (Batson, Eklund, Chermok, Hoyt, & Ortiz, 2007; Helliwell & Wang, 2011; Poulin, 2013).”
• The Education Effect: Higher Educational Qualifications are Robustly Associated with Beneficial Personal and Socio-political Outcomes (2015, neutral): “For individuals, social trust has been shown to be strongly positively related to subjective well-being across a vast array of nations (Helliwell and Wang 2011), and to selfreported health in the US (Subramanian et al. 2002).”
• World happiness report (2012, neutral): “Helliwell & Wang (2011b).”
• Residents’ Support for Tourism (2016, positive): “This result confirms the centrality of trust in society, where human are social beings and trust is seen as a core element in the social setting (Helliwell & Wang, 2011).”
• The impact of economic, social and environmental factors on trip satisfaction and the likelihood of visitors returning (2016, neutral): “…& Zumbo, 2000), degree of freedom and personal choice by (Stanca, 2009), and trust in others or society by (Engelbrecht, 2009; Helliwell, 2003; Helliwell & Wang, 2011; MacKerron & Mourato, 2009; Stanca, 2009) Quality of natural environment Environmental impacts of tourism discussed by…”
• Trust, welfare states and income equality: Sorting out the causality (2014, neutral): “For example, Hennig-Schmidt (2002) documents bargaining discussions in experimental settings similar to the one shown in Fig.”
• Proposing the Communicate Bond Belong Theory: Evolutionary Intersections With Episodic Interpersonal Communication (2017, neutral): “Although interacting with close relational partners is associated with greater well-being, there is evidence of diminishing returns for larger and more distant social networks (Helliwell & Wang, 2011).”