The Impact of Regional Attachment on Interpersonal Trust

How much individuals trust others politically, and who they trust, remains an intriguing question for social science researchers. Previous research indicates that levels of political trust demonstrated by individuals often vary based on a variety of factors, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, ideology, and partisanship. However, one area of political trust that has remained surprisingly unexplored has been the impact of regional identity, particularly among Southerners. My theory is that, similar to the manner in which the aforementioned markers work, Southern regional identity activates stereotypes regarding trustworthiness and, thus, influences inter-regional trust decisions. As a result, we expect Southern regional identifiers to trust each other more than non-Southern regional identifiers. If this is indeed the case, this could have implications for the evaluation of politicians based on region, and could also impact levels of support surrounding issues of federalism, which often pit region against region.