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The structure of trust as a reflection of culture and institutional power structure: Evidence from four East Asian societies
Author(s) -
Zhang Robert Jiqi,
Liu James H.,
Milojev Petar,
Jung Jiin,
Wang Syfeng,
Xie Tian,
Choi Hoonseok,
Yamaguchi Susumu,
Morio Hiroaki
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12350
Subject(s) - mainland china , east asia , china , government (linguistics) , mainland , power (physics) , democracy , structural equation modeling , asian values , political science , sociology , social psychology , economic geography , psychology , geography , politics , law , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , machine learning
Using the Global Trust Inventory, an integrated measure of trust toward 21 relationships and institutions, the structure of trust was explored in four East Asian societies (Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan). The Western model, in which trust is distributed among seven factors representing different branches of society, did not generalize to these East Asian societies, perhaps due to differences in culture and institutional power structures. Instead, two unique structures of trust were identified. Mainland China had a top‐down structure of trust (the China model), in which trust is hierarchically separated between the central government and subordinate implementing bodies. The other three democratic East Asian societies shared a hybrid structure of trust (the Democratic East Asian model) that has a degree of similarity to both the China model and the Western model. Having established two similar, but still distinct models, a cross‐cultural comparison was made on the proportions of trust profiles generated by latent profile analysis. Mainland China had the largest proportion of people with a high propensity to trust, followed by Japan and South Korea, and Taiwan was the least trusting. Implications of the structure of trust and this alternative approach to conducting cross‐cultural comparisons are discussed.