Blaine G. Robbins

Neither government nor community alone: A test of state-centered models of generalized trust

A classic controversy within the institutionalist literature has yet to be resolved. Does the state either render or erode generalized trust? The crowding out perspective contends that trust decays as a result of the state. The political-institutional perspective maintains that the state molds an environment where trust can grow. Using hierarchical generalized linear models with data from the World Values Survey and other sources, this article directly tests these competing arguments and demonstrates strong support for the political-institutional perspective. Although apparatuses of the state — specifically the public allocation of resources and legal property rights institutions — directly and positively influence generalized trust, these effects are not mediated by voluntary associations or income inequality. Instead, this article reveals that property rights institutions moderate and amplify the positive effect of voluntary associations on generalized trust. I discuss the theoretical implications of the results while exploring limitations and avenues for future research.

A Blessing and a Curse? Political Institutions in the Growth and Decay of Generalized Trust: A Cross-National Panel Analysis, 1980–2009

Despite decades of research on social capital, studies that explore the relationship between political institutions and generalized trust–a key element of social capital–across time are sparse. To address this issue, we use various cross-national public-opinion data sets including the World Values Survey and employ pooled time-series OLS regression and fixed- and random-effects estimation techniques on an unbalanced panel of 74 countries and 248 observations spread over a 29-year time period. With these data and methods, we investigate the impact of five political-institutional factors–legal property rights, market regulations, labor market regulations, universality of socioeconomic provisions, and power-sharing capacity–on generalized trust. We find that generalized trust increases monotonically with the quality of property rights institutions, that labor market regulations increase generalized trust, and that power-sharing capacity of the state decreases generalized trust. While generalized trust increases as the government regulation of credit, business, and economic markets decreases and as the universality of socioeconomic provisions increases, both effects appear to be more sensitive to the countries included and the modeling techniques employed than the other political-institutional factors. In short, we find that political institutions simultaneously promote and undermine generalized trust.

Climate, Affluence, and Trust Revisiting Climatoeconomic Models of Generalized Trust With Cross-National Longitudinal Data, 1981-2009

Recent theory predicts that climatic demands in conjunction with wealth-based resources serve to enhance socio-psychological functioning and facilitate the development of cognitive processes such as generalized trust. Past research, however, has provided only cross-sectional evidence to support this theory. In this study, I analyzed a repeated cross-sectional data set that included representative data from 123 societies spread over a 29-year time period. Unbalanced random-effects models and ordinary least squares regression showed that thermal climate and wealth-based resources interacted in their influence on generalized trust. Although the observed associations were robust to potential sources of bias, conditional marginal effect sizes for thermal climate were significantly reduced with the inclusion of confounding control variables. The findings support climatic demands–resource theory of generalized trust, invite new research directions, and yield important implications for trust research and theory.

Trust in Uzbekistan

Although trust is a lively area of research, it is rarely investigated in countries outside of commonly available cross-national public-opinion datasets. In an effort to fill this empirical void and to draw conclusions concerning the general determinants of trust, the current article employs detailed survey data from a frequently overlooked Central Asian country, Uzbekistan, to test the relationship between particularized trust and demographic traits previously identified as influential. While a number of Uzbek demographic characteristics coincide with previously identified determinants of trust, age and education yield negative effects not previously found. Interestingly, individual-level demographic variables become insignificant when controlling for regional, religious, and linguistic variation. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications.

Probing the Links Between Trustworthiness, Trust, and Emotion

An outstanding puzzle in the social sciences remains about the forms of perceived trustworthiness sufficient to produce trust. Survey experiments adjudicated between four models of the trustworthiness-trust link—social constraints, encapsulated interests, goodwill, and virtuous dispositions—and tested novel hypotheses about other-praising emotions (admiration and gratitude) as mediating effects. Two large convenience samples of Amazon.com Mechanical Turk workers yielded strong support for all four perspectives as well as novel predictions about the inequality of effects (goodwill = virtuous dispositions > encapsulated interests > social constraints). Two additional large random samples of public university undergraduate students replicated prior findings and provided evidence for other-praising emotions as plausible mechanisms that connect trustworthiness to trust, with larger mediating effects for goodwill and virtuous dispositions than for encapsulated interests and social constraints. Results indicate that trust can spring from multiple forms of perceived trustworthiness and that affective mechanisms play an important role in its development.

PLAYING WITH FIRE, COMPETING WITH SPIRIT: COOPERATION IN THE SPORT OF ULTIMATE

Prior research shows that third-party agents are necessary to promote cooperation when groups are large and spatially diffuse. I explore whether this proposition holds in the self-governing sport of Ultimate. While the size of the community and spatial diffusion of the sport theoretically suggests limited decentralized control, the widespread implementation of a refereed system has not yet emerged. Instead, I find with qualitative methods that cooperation in Ultimate is the result of the sport being federally controlled and embedded within tiers of organizational constraint that promote informal regulation of competitions through norms, reputations, and self-discipline.

When Social Constraints Increase Trust

The degree to which social constraints promote or undermine trust remains unknown. One classic perspective suggests that trust blossoms in the presence of social constraints, while another influential school of thought proposes that social constraints wither trust. The author integrates both traditions and proposes a model whereby social constraints increase trust, but only to the extent that individuals attribute another’s perceived trustworthiness to the situation. As individuals increasingly attribute another’s perceived trustworthiness to dispositional factors, the positive effect of social constraints on trust declines and approaches zero. The author addresses this debate and tests the model by designing two novel survey experiments of simulated car repair and group project scenarios. Findings from two large crowdsourced samples support the model. Implications for existing theory and future research are discussed.

Power-use in cooperative competition: A power-dependence model and an empirical test of network structure and geographic mobility

Although the social exchange paradigm has produced a vibrant research program, the theoretical tradition is rarely used to model the structure of social networks outside of experiments and simulations. To address this limitation, we derive power-dependence predictions about network structure and geographic mobility-the outcomes of power-use-and test these predictions using complete data on competition networks and travel schedules among amateur sports teams. Poisson regression and exponential random graph models provide strong support for our predictions. The findings illustrate exchange dynamics in which status resources desired by teams, coupled with the availability of geographically proximal alternatives, create power and dependence that dictate where and with whom teams compete. Although evidence supports Georg Simmels classic proposition that networks form on the basis of values and propinquity, we show that this complex dynamic is conditional on power and dependence. We conclude by discussing implications and directions for future research.

Status, identity, and ability in the formation of trust

The sources of trust—or actor A’s belief about actor B’s trustworthiness with respect to particular matter Y—are myriad, ranging from the biological to the political. Despite the great amount of research that has investigated decision making as a function of another’s ascribed and achieved characteristics, we still know little about whether and to what extent these characteristics impact A’s trust in B regarding matter Y. In this article, I draw on classic sociological traditions—status characteristics theory and social identity theory—to formulate hypotheses that link ascribed and achieved characteristics to trust. Four survey experiments administered to Amazon.com Mechanical Turk workers (N = 1388 and N = 1419) and to public university undergraduate students (N = 995 and N = 956) showed that diffuse status characteristics (age, race, and gender) and social identities (co-age, co-race, and co-gender) produced weak to null effects depending on the population, hypothetical scenario, and nominal social category under study, while specific status characteristics (actual competence) consistently produced modest effects. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Cooperation Without Culture? The Null Effect of Generalized Trust on Intentional Homicide: A Cross-National Panel Analysis, 1995-2009

Sociologists, political scientists, and economists all suggest that culture plays a pivotal role in the development of large-scale cooperation. In this study, I used generalized trust as a measure of culture to explore if and how culture impacts intentional homicide, my operationalization of cooperation. I compiled multiple cross-national data sets and used pooled time-series linear regression, single-equation instrumental-variables linear regression, and fixed- and random-effects estimation techniques on an unbalanced panel of 118 countries and 232 observations spread over a 15-year time period. Results suggest that culture and large-scale cooperation form a tenuous relationship, while economic factors such as development, inequality, and geopolitics appear to drive large-scale cooperation.