<p>The data for the World Values Survey appears to be collected by simple asking people &quot;Do you or do you not agree that most people can be trusted&quot; (as explained here: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/trust" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ourworldindata.org/trust</a>)</p>
<p>Thus, I have a few theories that might help to explain why China is ranked so high on trust in the World Values Survey.</p>
<ol>
<li>Reference group effect. As described in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C44&amp;q=What%27s%20wrong%20with%20cross-cultural%20comparisons%20of%20subjective%20Likert%20scales%3F%3A%20The%20reference-group%20effect.&amp;btnG=" rel="nofollow noreferrer">What's wrong with cross-cultural comparisons of subjective Likert scales?: The reference-group effect.</a>, people tend to compare themselves to a reference group that they are familiar with. Thus, people in China might view &quot;most people can be trusted&quot; very differently than a Swede or a German might.</li>
<li>Social desirability bias. If there is literally just and interviewer asking a person a question, then the respondent will likely alter their answers based on what they think the interviewer wants/likes. Conformity tends to be high in China, so social desirability bias might have an stronger effect there compared to more individualistic cultures (like the USA).</li>
<li>Living under a dictatorship. People in China are aware that any information they give to other people can be used against them, and people generally don't share negative opinions/perspectives openly when the answers are being recorded. I suspect that this is a result both of the particular social upheavals of how Chinese people behaved during the cultural revolution, and that this is related to self-censorship of unpopular/unapproved opinions.</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-23T07:24:11.057Z
2022-04-23T07:24:11.057Z
Joseph
<p>The World Values Survey includes information on trust. My question is thus: how the heck is China measured that high? Experts on China view China as a low-trust society, people are always suspicious of one another, and people in general trust each other very little in China. I've questioned a few friends, and they agree that it is very odd to see China ranking so high on this scale of trust.</p>
<p>Extra context: I encountered this in the paper The Organization of Firms Across Countries, by Bloom, Sadun, and Van Reenen. The general argument of the paper is that higher trust allows a company to be more decentralized which allows it to grow larger. The picture is a screenshot from the paper.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/mu6sJ.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/mu6sJ.jpg" alt="China ranking higher than US, Japan, or Germany on trust." /></a></p>
<p>The full information on the paper is here:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen, The Organization of
Firms Across Countries*, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume
127, Issue 4, November 2012, Pages 1663–1705,
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qje029" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qje029</a></p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-16T14:56:36.323Z
As a native of China living in Shanghai, I am also shocked by that ranking. How do they define trust?
Lzn
<social-psychology><cross-cultural-psychology><trust>
World Value Survey, trust, and China
Joseph
# World Value Survey, trust, and China

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-04-15)

The World Values Survey includes information on trust. My question is thus: how the heck is China measured that high? Experts on China view China as a low-trust society, people are always suspicious of one another, and people in general trust each other very little in China. I've questioned a few friends, and they agree that it is very odd to see China ranking so high on this scale of trust.

Extra context: I encountered this in the paper The Organization of Firms Across Countries, by Bloom, Sadun, and Van Reenen. The general argument of the paper is that higher trust allows a company to be more decentralized which allows it to grow larger. The picture is a screenshot from the paper.

[![China ranking higher than US, Japan, or Germany on trust.](https://i.sstatic.net/mu6sJ.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/mu6sJ.jpg)

The full information on the paper is here:

> Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen, The Organization of
> Firms Across Countries\*, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume
> 127, Issue 4, November 2012, Pages 1663–1705,
> <https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qje029>

**Tags:** social-psychology, cross-cultural-psychology, trust

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: As a native of China living in Shanghai, I am also shocked by that ranking. How do they define trust?  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_0 on 2022-04-23. Score: 1

The data for the World Values Survey appears to be collected by simple asking people "Do you or do you not agree that most people can be trusted" (as explained here: <https://ourworldindata.org/trust>)

Thus, I have a few theories that might help to explain why China is ranked so high on trust in the World Values Survey.

1. Reference group effect. As described in [What's wrong with cross-cultural comparisons of subjective Likert scales?: The reference-group effect.](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=What%27s%20wrong%20with%20cross-cultural%20comparisons%20of%20subjective%20Likert%20scales%3F%3A%20The%20reference-group%20effect.&btnG=), people tend to compare themselves to a reference group that they are familiar with. Thus, people in China might view "most people can be trusted" very differently than a Swede or a German might.
2. Social desirability bias. If there is literally just and interviewer asking a person a question, then the respondent will likely alter their answers based on what they think the interviewer wants/likes. Conformity tends to be high in China, so social desirability bias might have an stronger effect there compared to more individualistic cultures (like the USA).
3. Living under a dictatorship. People in China are aware that any information they give to other people can be used against them, and people generally don't share negative opinions/perspectives openly when the answers are being recorded. I suspect that this is a result both of the particular social upheavals of how Chinese people behaved during the cultural revolution, and that this is related to self-censorship of unpopular/unapproved opinions.


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