Working Papers in Economics,
University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: In a representative Swedish sample people were asked to judge the relative extent that different groups of people are considered trustworthy in several dimensions, including their political views and reading habits. A statistically significant effect of similarity on perceived trustworthiness was found in each of the seven dimensions analyzed. For example, right-wing voters consider Social Democratic voters to be much less trustworthy than right-wing voters, and vice versa. Thus, it seems that perceived trustworthiness decreases quite generally with the social distance. It is argued that social identity theory offers a plausible explanation. Moreover, older people are generally considered more trustworthy than younger, and people living in small cities are considered more trustworthy than people living in big cities.

Keywords: social capital; trustworthiness; social distance; identity; social identity; self-signalling

JEL-codes: C42; Z13

21 pages, July 22, 2006

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