Social Trust: Why the common good is so hard to achieve

Selfishness in the United States

A while back I was looking at the research on selfishness in the US. We all believe that people in the US have become more selfish over time as their economic opportunities have declined.

There was a lot of the research, but it was on individual selfish decision making not the larger effect on society. It's the kind of stuff that get a researcher academic tenure, but keeps policy makers and the public in the dark.

The best I could do was a Pew Research Survey from 2015 that said 68% of Americans believed their fellow countrymen were selfish.   Or another Pew study about how much people: "Trust their neighbors." There is some good news: a lot of research says people are naturally inclined to help one another and not be selfish.

But trying to research and measure selfishness for a whole group or population was much more difficult.  There was no selfishness index. Enter "Social Trust."

Social Trust

It turns out I was using the wrong term. Selfishness is the individual behavior; Social Trust is the collective behavior. Social trust is a great predictor of a country's economic performance; it's more accurate than skill level. It is as important as capital investment.

It's also associated with non-financial measures of happiness and well-being. Pew Research has a survey from 2007, which documents the basics of social trust.

So does a UK Goverment website. The Behavioral Insights Team has a discussion from November, 2015 on social trust.

If you are interested in how other countries score, you can check the World Values Survey.