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

信任是一个重要的研究主题，是社会学的基础之一。尽管如此，信任一直并将继续主要被视为一个理论问题，而不是一个有经验基础的问题。这项研究基于对7个国家(美国、俄罗斯、日本、德国、捷克、土耳其和台湾)的全国性调查，其结果可以概括如下：1.密歇根大学社会研究所基于三个问题编制的人际信任量表在五个国家得到验证，但在日本和台湾没有得到验证。父母的信任(或不信任)社会化显著影响五个国家成年后的信任(或不信任)，但在日本和台湾则不显著。作为互惠规范的信任并未被认为是七个国家之间的普遍现象。最后，研究发现，尽管这七个国家之间存在一些共同点，但至少从个性角度来看，信任的基础是不同的。

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.