Trust plays a key role in how people stay abreast of what’s happening around them.
Americans trust each other less than they did a few decades ago. The share of adults who said “most people can be trusted” declined from 46% in 1972 to 34% in 2018, according to the General Social Survey.
In a 2023-24 Pew Research Center poll, an identical 34% said most people can be trusted.
Who says most people can be trusted?
Social trust seems to be rooted partly in personal experience. People learn to trust others based on how they themselves have been treated. But scarring events that reduce trust – like losing a job or experiencing discrimination – may happen to people in some groups more often than others, leading to differences in trust across society.
For example, Americans with lower levels of education or income are less likely to say most people can be trusted.
And many other personal characteristics are associated with levels of trust, including age and gender.
Racial and ethnic differences stand out: Black (21%) and Hispanic Americans (23%) tend to express lower levels of trust than White (40%) and Asian Americans (38%).
Racial and ethnic differences persist even after we take income, education, partisanship, age and other factors into account. Previous research shows that collective as well as individual experiences with racial discrimination can have a lasting impact on levels of trust.
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