Trust in Time : How the Impressionable Years, Detrimental Events and Collective Experiences Shape Social Trust

This dissertation is a compilation thesis comprised of three individual research articles that explore whether and how the impressionable years, detrimental events and collective crises predict social trust – the belief that most people can be trusted. Despite the widespread scholarly interest in social trust, most previous research in the formation of social trust over the life-course is based on data from adults. While the relevant existing studies place emphasis on social trust’s durability and resistance to change, surprisingly few studies have examined if this holds true during adolescence and early adulthood. Specific attention is thus paid to the question how social trust develops from adolescence to early adulthood and beyond. Empirically, the thesis’ main data come from the Swiss Household Panel study, which, crucially, includes respondents from the year they turn 14, thus making it possible to analyse the development of individual-level social trust from early teenagerhood throughout adolescence and beyond. For comparatative purposes, the thesis also draw on cross-sectional survey data from the European Social Survey and the World Values Survey. Analysing stability and change in social trust during the COVID-19 pandemic, it finds that an exceptionally large share of respondents displayed a decline in social trust in spring 2020. However, in most cases, the earlier losses in trust recovered to pre-crisis levels shortly afterwards, thus lending support for the notion that people’s social trust tend to fluctuate around a baseline set-point. Using a range of different quantitative modelling techniques, it is also found that social trust substantially declines at the onset of teenagerhood, a timeframe that also marks the beginning of a life-course period frequently refered to as the ‘impressionable years’. Although people’s social trust tend to gradually recover over the life span, it never fully recovers to the same levels displayed at the age of 14. Examining the scarring effect of negative experiences, it emphasizes that youth – but not adult – unemployment leaves lasting scars on people’s social trust, well into adulthood. Those ‘scars’ are cumulative, as they go deeper with both the number and duration of unemployment experiences. Overall, the thesis challenges prevailing understandings and synthesis of the litterature on the so-called cultural perspective and the impressionable years.