Thursday, June 11, 2009

Religious & national trust   posted by Razib @ 6/11/2009 06:00:00 AM
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The World Values Survey Wave 5 has several questions about how much people trust others. In particular, one question asks about religion and another nationality. There are four responses:

-Trust completely
-Trust a little
-Not trust very much
-Not trust at all

In the WVS there are proportions for each class for many nations. I took each proportion, and multiplied them by a number where:

-Trust completely = 3
-Trust a little = 2
-Not trust very much = 1
-Not trust at all = 0

So that if 100% did not trust at all the number would add to 0, and if 100% trusted complete it would add to 4. Naturally most nations fell in between with a range. I assumed that there would be a strong correlation between the two values. It was very strong, as evidenced by the charts below.




OK, so how does religious trust related to how important people think is in their own lives? Again, there are four categories, from very important to not important at all. Again weighting the proportions so that 4 = very important and 0 = not important at all. So how about religious trust vs. religion important?



No need to label, there's just no relationship. Weird. I also drilled down for selected nations to see if there was a relationship within the nations in regards to trust (both kinds here) and how important religion was. Not really. In fact, in many nations the least religious trusted those of other religions the least, so it might be expressing a general anti-religious sentiment. As an anecdote I friend whose husband was French one commented how secular French have a distrust of religion in general, and view non-traditional religions with particular distaste, viewing them as cults (non-traditional as in evangelical Protestantism, Hare Krishna, etc.).

The raw data....

Religious Trust National Trust Religion Important
Sweden 2.03 2.08 1.09
France 1.99 2.01 1.26
Great Britain 1.87 1.86 1.36
Mali 1.85 1.7 2.89
Finland 1.85 1.77 1.48
United States 1.81 1.75 2.1
Canada 1.8 1.76 1.76
Australia 1.74 1.77 1.29
Switzerland 1.72 1.76 1.4
Andorra 1.71 1.8 0.98
South Africa 1.7 1.42 2.58
Rwanda 1.67 1.31 2.35
Argentina 1.63 1.56 1.88
Trinidad 1.6 1.48 2.64
Burkina Faso 1.55 1.42 2.8
Ghana 1.5 1.14 2.88
Taiwan 1.42 1.16 1.52
Poland 1.4 1.37 2.32
Brazil 1.4 0.86 2.39
Netherlands 1.38 1.35 1.04
Spain 1.37 1.41 1.24
India 1.36 1.12 2.27
Ethiopia 1.36 1.13 2.73
South Korea 1.35 1.11 1.5
Bulgaria 1.35 1.34 1.53
Indonesia 1.32 1.2 2.93
Georgia 1.31 1.56 2.77
Germany 1.29 1.28 1.08
Ukraine 1.27 1.34 1.6
Zambia 1.26 0.95 2.71
Italy 1.26 1.31 2.04
Malaysia 1.23 0.87 2.76
Chile 1.21 1.09 2.05
Thailand 1.16 1.01 2.5
Russia 1.15 1.21 1.44
Vietnam 1.15 1 1.2
Slovenia 1.11 1.12 1.32
Romania 1.1 1.08 2.46
Jordan 1.05 1 2.94
Mexico 1.02 0.84 2.41
Turkey 1.01 1 2.64
Cyprus 1 1.03 2.29
Moldova 0.98 1.18 1.98
Morocco 0.91 0.91 2.89
Peru 0.89 0.68 2.21
China 0.89 0.8 0.82

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