A Cross-National Empirical Study of Trust in the Age of Globalization

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Trust is an important research theme which forms one of the bases of sociology. Nonetheless, trust has been and continues to be treated primarily as a theoretical issue rather than one with empirical underpinnings. The findings of the present study, based on nationwide surveys among seven nations (the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Taiwan), can be summarized as follows :1. Speculation about an interpersonal trust scale based on three questions as developed by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan was validated for five nations, but not for Japan and Taiwan.2. Parental socialization of trust (or distrust) significantly impacts later adult trust (or distrust) among five nations, but not in Japan or Taiwan.3. Trust as a norm of reciprocity was not identified as a universal phenomenon among the seven nations.4. Finally, the bases of trust, at least from a personality perspective, were found to vary among the seven nations, though there were some commonalities.