Take Five? Testing the Cultural and Experiential Theories of Generalised Trust Against Five Criteria

Is generalised trust stable or changeable? The ‘cultural’ theory argues that trust is a relatively fixed personality trait, while the ‘experiential’ theory contends that life experiences can alter trust during adulthood. But these two theories have been tested using a variety of different criteria whose differences have seemingly never been acknowledged explicitly. In this article, I map out these five different criteria, formulating specific hypotheses for each one and test them on a large and representative longitudinal data set from Australia. As expected, both the cultural and experiential theories appear broadly correct: trust is affected by both early-life factors and adult experiences, but the impact of adult experiences is usually transitory. A broad range of adult experiences seem to affect trust, and trust exhibits high rank-order but low mean-level stability. I conclude by suggesting some new directions for the study of generalised trust.