Work

Trust Within a Community Is a Double-edged Sword: Trust Has a Positive Individual-level Effect and a Negative Contextual Effect on Subjective Well-being

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: Previous studies have found that trust has a positive effect on subjective well-being. However, when trust is accumulated within a community, it can create expectations of trustworthiness and consequently be transformed into shared social norms. We hypothesized that trust toward community members (i.e., community trust) would have a positive effect on well-being at the individual level. Further, we anticipated that it would have a negative contextual effect on subjective well-being at the community level, because it constrains individual freedom by constructing shared norms within a community. We mailed our survey to each household across 105 randomly-sampled communities in the Yasu River watershed in Shiga prefecture, Japan. We conducted multilevel analyses using the survey data (Nindivdual = 3,116, Ncommunity = 99). As predicted, the results showed that community trust had a positive effect on subjective well-being at the individual level and a negative contextual effect at the community level. This suggests that living in a community where residents trust each other may dampen one’s subjective well-being. Implications for studies on happiness and social dynamics are discussed.

Source: PSYCHOLOGIA

DOI: 10.2117/psysoc.2019-b011

Authors: Shintaro FUKUSHIMA, Kosuke TAKEMURA, Yukiko UCHIDA, Satoshi ASANO, Noboru OKUDA

Institutions: Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Shiga University, Kyoto University, Lake Biwa Environmental Research Institute, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

Language: English

Topic: Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science