{"id":1836,"date":"2026-06-12T13:40:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=1836"},"modified":"2026-06-12T13:40:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:40:22","slug":"who-is-more-trusting-liberals-or-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/12\/who-is-more-trusting-liberals-or-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is More Trusting: Liberals or Conservatives?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I go crawling around in data from the General Social Survey, sooner or later I run into Ryan Burge, who writes Graphs About Religion<\/em>. In his most recent post<\/a>, he wrote about changes in interpersonal trust, as measured by this GSS question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can\u2019t be too careful in dealing with people?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Among other analyses, he looks at how the responses relate to self-identification as liberal, conservative, or moderate. The results are … complicated. Ryan writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Among older Americans who identify as liberal, they are more likely to trust other people. Among Gen Z liberals, it\u2019s exactly the opposite.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To explain why older liberals are more trusting, Ryan suggests:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Liberalism is based on collectivism. It embraces the idea that \u201ctogether, we can achieve more.\u201d Things like universal healthcare rely on a sense of trust among large groups of people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But if that\u2019s true, why does the effect go in the opposite direction with Gen Z? Ryan speculates:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, maybe liberals feel very slighted by the fact that Donald Trump has been on the ballot for president in every election in which they\u2019ve been eligible to vote, and he\u2019s won twice. Or it could be that they are more impacted by the cynicism of the internet than conservatives? Or maybe it\u2019s because they report higher rates of depression and anxiety than the rest of the ideological spectrum?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As it happened, I looked at the same GSS variable in a recent article<\/a>. But I didn\u2019t do the breakdown by political ideology, so let\u2019s do that now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Story So Far<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

First, here\u2019s a recap of what we saw in the previous post, with the whole GSS sample. The following figure shows the percentage of respondents who said \u201cmost people can be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Time
Time series: percent saying most people can be trusted (all respondents)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interpersonal trust has declined consistently since the survey started in 1972. In the previous post, I decomposed this trend into cohort and period effects. Here\u2019s the estimated cohort effect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Standardized
Standardized cohort effect with fixed time mix, percent saying most people can be trusted (all respondents)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The level of trust increased between the cohorts born in the 1900s through the 1940s, and then started a steep decline \u2014 more than 30 percentage points over 60 years. And here\u2019s the remaining period effect, after factoring out the cohort effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Standardized
Standardized time trend with fixed cohort mix, percent saying most people can be trusted (all respondents)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is almost no period effect in the full sample.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breakdown by Politics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s get to the question we started with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who is more trusting: liberals or conservatives?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the time series, broken down by ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Time
Time series: percent saying most people can be trusted, by 3-point political views<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Until recently, there was not much difference: liberals and conservatives were about equally likely to say people can be trusted \u2014 both a little more trusting than moderates (who are, maybe, too distrustful to join a team).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the 2000s, liberals and conservatives have diverged, and now liberals are more trusting, by about 5 percentage points. But all three groups are still declining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s decompose those trends into cohort and period effects. Here are the cohort effects for the three groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Standardized
Standardized cohort effect for generalized trust by political views (uniform weights on survey years within group)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here we can see what Ryan reported: in most generations, liberals are more trusting than conservatives; it\u2019s only in the most recent generation that it goes the other way. The crossover happens among people born in the mid-1990s, close to the conventional beginning of Gen Z (born 1997 to 2012).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here\u2019s the period effect for the three groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Standardized
Standardized period trend for generalized trust by political views (fixed within-group cohort weights)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For conservatives and moderates, the period effect is generally downward, although small. For liberals, it\u2019s the other way around, generally increasing since about 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cohort-period decomposition provides some hints about what\u2019s going on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n