Do you trust people who are not like you?
October 13, 2006
Harvard Political Science professor Robert Putnam released a study recently which states that “the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone.” Here’s an excerpt from the article:
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The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”
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I can understand being slightly less willing to trust someone who may be perceived as different from you, but not trusting anyone????? That seems like a bit much.
Do you agree with these findings?
Categories:
Diversity
Immigration
Trust
Comments
8 Responses to “Do you trust people who are not like you?”
Got something to say?
nope
l [and everyone else], why not? what kind of differences matter? race? sex? gender? class? sexual orientation? accent?
all differences matter initially. its moving past our initial impressions/stereotypes/etc that will decide whether we will allow ourselves to trust or not trust.
I agree Ellen. I guess what I’m therefore asking is, what are the differences that make us choose not to trust another person?
The differences we are ignorant of/about. Ignorance equates fear and fear breeds distrust.
I see. It seems to me then that people must want to distrust others because so many are so willing to be or stay ignorant. What makes people choose to be ignorant, and in turn distrusful?
My opinion is fear causes people to choose to be ignorant. It is a nasty cycle.
Even nasty cycles can be broken at some point, even if it happens one person at a time.