Ethnoracial Diversity and Trust Revisited: Bringing in Consolidation

• In Event: 1162 - Navigating Diversity in Everyday Life

Abstract

Research on social cohesion has recently centered around whether ethnic diversity reduces trust, but has paid little attention to how the consolidation, or correlation, of multiple social characteristics relates to trust. Classical theory by Blau and Schwartz (1984) states that consolidation of multiple social characteristics impedes outgroup contact, but researchers do not yet know whether consolidation also has implications for outgroup attitudes such as trust. This study bridges the diversity-trust debate with the literature on consolidation. In addition, it proposes and tests a new theoretical proposition, that the consequences of consolidation and diversity intensify each other. Using data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey in combination with Census microdata from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement, this study observes that consolidation of ethnoracial background and household income at the county level predicts lower outgroup trust among individuals in U.S. counties that are at least moderately diverse, and that the negative association between consolidation and outgroup trust is intensified by diversity. Under average levels of consolidation, however, this study finds that diversity does not predict trust. Diversity predicts lower outgroup trust in counties only when ethnoracial background and income are consolidated.

Author

• Linda Zhao, Harvard University