When Does Diversity Erode Trust? Neighborhood Diversity, Interpersonal Trust and the Mediating Effect of Social Interactions
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00717.x |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
When Does Diversity Erode Trust?
Neighborhood Diversity, Interpersonal Trust
and the Mediating Effect of Social
Interactions
Dietlind Stolle Stuart Soroka Richard Johnston
McGill University/
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin
McGill University University of Pennsylvania
This article contributes to the debate about the effects of ethnic diversity on social cohesion, particularly
generalized trust. The analysis relies on data from both the ‘Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy’(CID)
survey in the US and the‘Equality,Secur ity and CommunitySur vey’(ESCS) in Canada.Our analysis, one
of the first controlled cross-national comparisons of small-unit contextual variation, confirms recent
findings on the negative effect of neighborhood diversity on white majorities across the two countries.
Our most important finding, however,is that not everyone is equally sensitive to context.Individuals who
regularly talk with their neighbors are less influenced by the racial and ethnic character of their
surroundings than people who lack such social interaction. This finding challenges claims about the
negative effects of diversity on trust – at least,it suggests that the negative effects so prevalent in existing
research can be mediated by social ties.
Research on the sources of social capital has recently turned to the role of
diversity, and specifically to the potentials or problems that it poses for civic
engagement, social connectedness and interpersonal trust and reciprocity. The
focus has generally been on the difficulties caused by ethnic or racial diversity.A
growing body of evidence suggests that localities,neighborhoods, regions or states
and even countries with more ethnic, racial and socio-economic diversity expe-
rience substantially more problems with the creation of various kinds of social
capital, cooperation, trust and support necessary for collective action critical to
social welfare programs.
These findings are reflected in the popular media. Chang ing immigration pat-
terns, perceptions of the increase in the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers
in Europe,the r ising visibility of ethnic and racial minorities, as well as increasing
socio-economic inequalities in North America, have contributed to an expanding
debate about the consequences of these developments for community and social
cohesion. Journalists, policy makers and ideologues have repeatedly expressed
fears of an increasingly complex and multi-ethnic world.David Goodhart (2004),
editor of Prospect magazine, puts it starkly: ‘Britain can have either mass immi-
gration or generous welfare, but not both – and of the two, welfare is better’.
Academic and public attention has recently been drawn to new research by
Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who has confirmed in an extensive US-based
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00717.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008 VOL 56, 57–75
© 2008The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
analysis that ethnic and racial neighborhood diversity exerts negative short-term
effects on trust in other people, as well as many other civic attitudes and behaviors
(Putnam, 2007). We contribute to this debate by expanding the analysis to
compare the influence of ethnic/racial diversity in US as well as Canadian
neighborhoods using the 2005 ‘Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy’ survey
(CID) in the US (Howard et al., 2005), and the 2002/3 second wave of the
‘Equality, Security and Community Survey’ (ESCS) in Canada. Since the nature
of racial/ethnic diversity in these two countries is quite different,it is not obvious
that we might expect the same patterns across these two cultures.We neverthe-
less find similar results in each: particularly for racial/ethnic majorities,
neighborhood-level diversity is associated with decreasing levels of interpersonal
trust in both US as well as Canadian localities.
We then go one step further and explore the micro-level dynamic underlying
these contextual effects, drawing on the literatures on inter-group relations, social
capital and the contact hypothesis. A diverse neighborhood context may pose a
lesser problem for those who have regular, personal interactions with their
neighbors. That is, if you have social ties to others in your diverse neighborhood,
the diversity of that neighborhood may not be as threatening to your level of
interpersonal trust as for someone who lives in a diverse neighborhood without
such social interactions.We take advantage of the detailed questions on personal
ties in the CID survey to explore this heterogeneity in the effect of neighborhood
diversity. When census-level diversity is replaced with individuals’ diversity in
their neighborhood networks, the negative effects on trust are mediated by the
regularity with which individuals interact with their neighbors. Social ties, it
appears, can effectively overcome the feeling of being threatened by diversity. The
implication is that the negative effects of diversity on trust are not felt equally
across all individuals. Minor ities and majorities respond differently to diversity,
certainly,but so too do those with or without ties to others in their community.
The Diversity Paradox
A growing body of research focuses on how diverse contexts – and particularly
the composition of neighborhood environments – influence generalized trust and
other attitudinal indicators of social cohesion. Most studies reveal that increasing
levels of diversity pose a challenge to civic and redistributive values (e.g. Alesina
and La Ferrara 1999; 2000; 2002; Costa and Kahn, 2003; Delhey and Newton,
2005; Hero, 2003; Putnam, 2007; Rice and Steele, 2001; Soroka et al., 2006;
Uslaner, 2002). In short, high levels of racial and ethnic heterogeneity are
accompanied by lower levels of trust and other civic attitudes.
These findings should not come as a big surprise. Socio-psychological research,
as well as work in political theory, suggests that tr ust should prosper in homo-
geneous settings, and suffer when faced with heterogeneity. Trust seems easier to
develop when we are familiar with the people around us, and particularly when
58 DIETLIND STOLLE, STUART SOROKA AND RICHARD JOHNSTON
© 2008The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(1)
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