Alina Moua

Trust is a firm belief that is an emotional and logical act. Trust is built and developed in many different ways. Trust in value exchange occurs when we do not know what we are receiving.

Race plays a significant factor when trust is involved. In this review literature, Race and Trust, the author Smith clarifies how do we explain trust. What do people do to explain trust. To analyze more in depth, they looked at how African Americans and Whites responded to trust. African Americans had different responses versus White people. 81% of Africans said most people were untrustworthy while 51% of Whites said people were untrustworthy. African Americans were also twice as much more likely to report that people were unfair. The question asking if people were helpful or taking advantage had 63% from Whites and 41% for African Americans. Those who feel like they've been targeted by police or targeted by society tend to have lower trust. The difference is always large, depending on the questions.

From their findings, social class, education, location, and income has a correlation with how people trust. None of these things however does not erase race. Race is still an important factor even when we are controlling other variables. The richest African American have as much trust as the poorest Whites. Trust is different among groups that race continues to be a strong factor.

In today's society, there is less trust. There has been a decline in trust across generations. Trust was a lot higher in the mid 1960s and then slowly declined as decades went by. In the article, Re-thinking the decline in trust: A comparison of black and white Americans, researchers focused on generational replacement and period effect to explain why the time an individual was born affects the amount of trust towards them. Using United States General Social Survey data collected from 1972 and 2008, the authors examine the general trust difference for blacks and whites.

To explain their findings, the researchers asked questions about trust such as, can most people be trusted or that you can't be too careful in life? These questions about trust are declining patterns among Whites. Whites don't trust as much as they use to. The research shows that great grandparents and grandparents were much more trusting than folks after. Compare to the African Americans levels of trust, it hasn't changed that much but it has gone down. This gap is narrowing the difference between African Americans and Whites in terms of trust over time. What develops people's trust are belief systems, specific events, and population that influences how society think and act in years to come. The relationship between diversity and trust lead to the decline in trust over time. An example to is 9/11. Many lives were lost unexpectedly, therefore people couldn't afford to put themselves at risk. Due to this, people's level of trust went down. Different generations have different levels of trust. For this reason, Americans no longer trust each other as much as they once did.