Conversation with ForbesLife: Alexey Belyanin shared his opinion on the study of trust in society

To answer the question of how trust affects longevity, the well-being of citizens and democracy, the author of ForbesLife Sergey Filimonov asked experts in the field of research on the nature of trust in public life.

In an interview with Forbes Life, Alexey Belyanin, Head of the International Laboratory of Experimental and Behavioral Economics at the Higher School of Economics, one of the authors of the work "Trust in Economics and Public Life", expressed the opinion that it is necessary to be more careful with the data of surveys on trust, because "if you measure trust on a standard question from the "World Values Study" (the so-called question in the form of Rosenberg), which sounds like "Do you think most people can be trusted, or will caution never be superfluous in dealing with people", then Russia is really far from the leaders," but at the same time, according to Alexey Vladimirovich, it must be borne in mind that "firstly, if you carefully read the wording, the question does not measure trust, but the justification of trustworthiness, they ask "Do you think that most people deserve trust" and not "Do you personally trust most people?"; Secondly, the question clearly draws attention to the expediency of distrust: in an alternative formulation recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), trust is measured on a scale from 0 to 10, and respondents are asked "How much do you think you can trust most people", i.e. trust is actually measured. In this formulation, confidence is significantly higher, and in countries such as Germany, Italy, the United States ranges from 60 to 65%, i.e. from 5 to 15 percentage points higher than in Rosenberg's formulation. Finally, it should be noted that there can be a lot behind the concept of "trusting the majority of people": this is trust in your loved ones and a random passerby, trust in business partners and their neighbors, state institutions and international associations." 
Alexey Belyanin notes that it is more appropriate to use alternative methods, for example, experimental games, rather than surveys, to measure the level of trust — they, on the contrary, show that in Russia everything is not so bad with interpersonal trust, which, according to his research, is 58%. He also notes that it is important to pay attention to the low trust in institutions (media, TV, police, judicial system).

You can read the full text of Sergey Filimonov's article at the link.