THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 29, 1996 TAG: 9601290102
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Americans who distrust other people are also less likely to trust the government and less likely to vote, a wide-ranging survey found.
Of those with little trust in human nature, 41 percent said they feel they have no say about what the government does and 53 percent viewed politicians as unsympathetic to their needs, according to the survey published Sunday in The Washington Post.
Only 35 percent of these least-trusting people had voted in the 1994 elections, according to the survey conducted by the Post, Harvard University and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Among their more-trusting fellow Americans, by contrast, only 16 percent said they had no say in what the government does, and only 26 percent viewed politicians as unsympathetic to their needs.
Sixty-one percent of the more trustful Americans had voted in the 1994 elections.
Based on three general questions about how much the respondents trusted other people, they were grouped into three batches. Thirty-seven percent fell into the least trusting group, and 27 percent were among the most trusting. The rest fell somewhere in the middle.
What causes mistrust of others? The survey found no single answer. But victims of crime mistrust other people more and are less confident that government can solve problems, the survey found.
In addition, those who are economically anxious about the future indicate significantly less trust in other people, the survey found.
The survey was paid for by the Post and by Kaiser, a nonprofit group that sponsors research into health care and other issues.
A total of 1,514 randomly selected adults were interviewed by telephone between Nov. 28 and Dec. 4, 1995. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
KEYWORDS: SURVEY by CNB