Electoral Chairs’ Seminars – October 19th

Cultural logic of negativity bias in generalized trust

Baowen Liang – Phd Student at Université de Montréal

Generalized trust designates the trust that people have in their fellow members of society in general. Previous work shows that there is a negativity bias in trust formation. Trust is relatively easy to destroy and difficult to create. However, extant research on negativity biases relies heavily on geographically-constrained samples from the Western hemisphere. In this study, I make the argument that the asymmetry of trust is likely to be based on contingent individualistic assumptions, but it pays less attention to collectivistic contexts. I design an online survey experiment in Mainland China to test the hypothesis that cultural considerations predict the strength of negativity bias tendencies in the formation of generalized trust. I wish to speak about the design and have your comments and suggestions before implementing the experiment.

This content has been updated on 13 October 2022 at 10 h 48 min.