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Introduction
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August 2014 - August 2016
September 2005 - July 2014
Publications
Publications (55)
Despite decades of interdisciplinary research on trust, the literature remains fragmented and balkanized with little consensus regarding its origins. This review documents how this came to be and attempts to offer a solution. Specifically, it evaluates issues of conceptualization found in the trust literature. I recommend that we move away from var...
Why do some people comply with their obligation to pay taxes while others do not? Scholars of tax behavior, particularly economists and political scientists, have relied on models of state coercion and state reciprocity to answer this question. Neither state coercion nor state reciprocity, however, sufficiently account for individuals who voluntari...
Collective action is a fundamental feature of human social life. If public goods are to materialize, social norms are to emerge, and social protests are to succeed, individuals must act jointly to achieve their collective ends. But how can collective action evolve when individuals receive the benefits of a common good without contributing to its pr...
The Stranger Face Trust scale (SFT) and Imaginary Stranger Trust scale (IST) are two new self-report measures of generalized trust that assess trust in strangers—both real and imaginary—across four trust domains. Prior research has established the reliability and validity of SFT and IST, but a number of measurement validation tests remain. Across t...
The Stranger Face Trust (SFT) questionnaire and the Imaginary Stranger Trust (IST) questionnaire are two new self-report measures of generalized trust that assess trust in real (SFT) and imaginary (IST) strangers across four trust domains. Both were designed to be objective, empirically valid, and easy to administer and score. To assess measurement...
Norms promote cooperation and prosocial behavior in groups, and one way in which norms support social order is by regulating concealment. However, systematic evidence on whether a norm of concealment affects the frequency of concealment and the content of what people conceal remains scarce. Using data from two surveys of US adults, we find that the...
Research suggests various associations between generalized trust and a wide range of economic, political, and social dimensions. Despite its importance, there is considerable debate about how best to measure generalized trust. One recent solution operationalizes generalized trust as the average of trust ratings across a small set of trust domains a...
Trust is important for a range of societal outcomes. Despite its significance, there is considerable debate about how best to measure trust. In the context of a newly developed measure of generalized trust—the Stranger Face Trust scale (SFT)—this study evaluates whether different features of survey scales affect the reliability and validity of SFT,...
Leaders are a part of virtually every group and organization, and while they help solve the various collective action problems that groups face, they can also be unprincipled and incompetent, pursuing their own interests over those of the group. What types of circumstances foster prosocial leadership and motivate leaders to pursue group interests?...
Research suggests various associations between generalized trust and a wide range of economic, political, and social dimensions. Despite its importance, there is considerable debate about how best to measure generalized trust. One recent solution operationalizes generalized trust as the average of trust ratings across a small set of trust domains a...
Generalized trust has been one of the most frequently examined constructs since researchers first introduced measures of it in the 1940s. Despite its significance, there is a growing consensus that traditional measures of generalized trust are prone to measurement invalidity and nonequivalence, calling into question sociological knowledge about gen...
Gender differences in wage negotiations have been offered as a popular explanation for why the gender gap in pay persists in the United States. In this study, we use data from an artificial wage negotiation experiment (N = 307) to examine the relationship between gender and wage negotiations and to test whether gender-role attitudes moderate this r...
In the social sciences, trust scholars largely divide their interests between two streams of research: one on generalized trust and one on particularized trust. While recent developments in the measurement of generalized trust have pushed the literature forward, similar improvements to the measurement of particularized trust have lagged behind. In...
The moral economy is a set of institutionalized rules, norms, and values that guide action in market economies. Historically, the norm of wage negotiations has been a central pillar of the U.S. moral economy, but research suggests that this may be changing. In the present study, the authors seek to evaluate whether the norm of wage negotiations is...
In the social sciences, trust scholars largely divide their interests between two streams of research: one on generalized trust and one on particularized trust. While recent developments in the measurement of generalized trust have pushed the literature forward, similar improvements to the measurement of particularized trust have lagged behind. In...
This article seeks to experimentally evaluate the thesis that marriage is deinstitutionalized in the United States. To do so, we map the character of the norm about whether different-sex couples ought to marry, and we identify the extent to which the norm is strong or weak along four dimensions: polarity, whether the norm is prescriptive, proscript...
Gender differences in wage negotiations is a popular explanation for why the gender gap in pay persists in the United States. In this study, we use data from an artificial wage negotiation experiment (N = 330) to interrogate the gender-negotiation link, and to test whether gender role attitudes (GRAs) moderate this association. Our experiment yield...
The moral economy is a set of institutionalized rules, norms, and values that guide action in market economies. Historically, the norm of wage negotiations has been a central pilar of the U.S. moral economy, but extant research suggests that this may be changing. In the present study, we seek to evaluate whether the norm of wage negotiations is dec...
Across the social sciences, generalized trust has been one of the most frequently examined constructs since researchers first introduced measures of it in the 1950s. Despite its significance, there is growing consensus that conventional measures of generalized trust are prone to measurement invalidity and non-equivalence, which places sociological...
This article seeks to experimentally evaluate the thesis that marriage is deinstitutionalized in the United States. To do so, we map the character of the norm about whether different-sex couples ought to marry, and identify the extent to which the norm is strong or weak along four dimensions: polarity, whether the norm is prescriptive, proscriptive...
What are the causes of anger and efficacy, and their consequences for protest intentions? Here we propose a multilevel dual pathway model of collective action where anger and efficacy operate at multiple levels of analysis. To test our model, we administer a factorial survey experiment of student protest to a disproportionate stratified random samp...
What do people conceal from others, and why? Despite the importance of concealing information as a way to establish boundaries between the self and others, avoid stigma, and define the situation, sociology is missing a comprehensive understanding of what people conceal, as well as a general account of concealment that is broadly applicable to most...
This research examines how social networks contribute to the process of radicalization, building on work showing that obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion for a cause is linked to greater support for political violence. Study 1 (N = 331) shows that obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion is related to affiliating with radical (vs. moderate) social network...
This article tests a theory of student protest based on collective action theories. Drawing on rational choice theories of selective incentives, critical mass theories of production functions, and social psychological theories of protest, the present article specifies a theory of willingness to protest. To test our model, we administer a factorial...
Collective action is a fundamental feature of human social life. If public goods are to materialize, social norms are to emerge, and social protests are to succeed, individuals must act jointly to achieve their collective ends. But how can collective action evolve when individuals receive the benefits of a common good without contributing to its pr...
The Stranger Face Trust scale (SFT) and Imaginary Stranger Trust scale (IST) are two new self-report measures of generalized trust that assess trust in strangers—both real and imaginary—across four trust domains. Prior research has established the reliability and validity of SFT and IST, but a number of measurement validation tests remain. Across t...
The Stranger-Face Trust (SFT) questionnaire and the Imaginary Stranger Trust (IST) questionnaire are two new self-report measures of generalized trust that assess trust in real (SFT) and imaginary (IST) strangers across four trust domains. Both were designed to be objective, empirically valid, and easy to administer and score. To assess measurement...
In order to collect the revenue necessary to fund public goods, a state is often required to both deter tax evasion and encourage voluntary tax compliance on the part of its citizens. While most prior research has focused on explaining tax evasion with standard economic model parameters, there has been growing interest in identifying the determinan...
The sources of trust—or actor A’s belief about actor B’s trustworthiness with respect to particular matter Y—are myriad, ranging from the biological to the political. Despite the great amount of research that has investigated decision making as a function of another’s ascribed and achieved characteristics, we still know little about whether and to...
Objective
There has been a growing interest in the relationship between culture and crime in recent years, but there is little research investigating the role of religion. To clarify this empirical cleavage, we propose a Durkheimian model of the countervailing effects of religion on violent crime.
Methods
We test our propositions with robust linea...
Objective. There has been a growing interest in the relationship between culture and crime in recent years, but there is little research investigating the role of religion. To clarify this empirical cleavage, we propose a Durkheimian model of the countervailing effects of religion on violent crime. Methods. We test our propositions with robust line...
The degree to which social constraints promote or undermine trust remains unknown. One classic perspective suggests that trust blossoms in the presence of social constraints, while another influential school of thought proposes that social constraints wither trust. The author integrates both traditions and proposes a model whereby social constraint...
An outstanding puzzle in the social sciences remains about the forms of perceived trustworthiness sufficient to produce trust. Survey experiments adjudicated between four models of the trustworthiness-trust link—social constraints, encapsulated interests, goodwill, and virtuous dispositions—and tested novel hypotheses about other-praising emotions...
Recent theory predicts that climatic demands in conjunction with wealth-based resources serve to enhance socio-psychological functioning and facilitate the development of cognitive processes such as generalized trust. Past research, however, has provided only cross-sectional evidence to support this theory. In this study, I analyzed a repeated cros...
Sociologists, political scientists, and economists all suggest that culture plays a pivotal role in the development of large-scale cooperation. In this study, I used generalized trust as a measure of culture to explore if and how culture impacts intentional homicide, my operationalization of cooperation. I compiled multiple cross-national data sets...
This article examines whether shared religious beliefs and religious social relationships (Durkheim) and belief in a personal, moral God (Stark) negatively affect attitudes toward the acceptability of white-collar crime. In addition, using a large cross-national sample and estimating multilevel models, we test whether effects are conditional on mod...
In a recent study, the authors reveal with structural equation models that the positive effect of information technology on generalized trust is mediated by political institutions. Although insightful, a key question remains: Is it the effectiveness and efficiency, the universality, and/or the power-sharing capacity of the state that mediates this...
This paper investigates the association between institutional quality and generalized trust. Despite the importance of the
topic, little quantitative empirical evidence exists to support either unidirectional or bidirectional causality for the reason
that cross-sectional studies rarely model the reciprocal relationship between institutional quality...
Prior research shows that third-party agents are necessary to promote cooperation when groups are large and spatially diffuse. I explore whether this proposition holds in the self-governing sport of Ultimate. While the size of the community and spatial diffusion of the sport theoretically suggests limited decentralized control, the widespread imple...
Despite decades of research on social capital, studies that explore the relationship between political institutions and generalized trust-a key element of social capital-across time are sparse. To address this issue, we use various cross-national public-opinion data sets including the World Values Survey and employ pooled time-series OLS regression...
Although trust is a lively area of research, it is rarely investigated in countries outside of commonly available cross-national public-opinion datasets. In an effort to fill this empirical void and to draw conclusions concerning the general determinants of trust, the current article employs detailed survey data from a frequently overlooked Central...
This article draws from an ongoing debate over explanations of homicide. Within this debate, we investigate the pro-social effects of civil society and social capital. Few cross-national studies explore whether elements of social capital either increase or decrease homicide. The cross-national work that does is often characterized by small, homogen...
A classic controversy within the institutionalist literature has yet to be resolved. Does the state either render or erode generalized trust? The crowding out perspective contends that trust decays as a result of the state. The political-institutional perspective maintains that the state molds an environment where trust can grow. Using hierarchical...
The country-level determinants of generalized trust that usually command the most research are ethnic homogeneity, institutional performance, civic culture, and economic development. Despite the popularity and insight of this research, there is little quantitative empirical evidence that explores the impact of technology-a necessary and exogenous c...
This field observation compares the behavior and welfare of ultimate Frisbee players in three settings. The first setting, Corning College, was an informal group at a private university. The second setting, Stuart University, was a seasonal, open collegiate team at a public university. The third setting, the Mallards, was a seasonal, elite, open cl...
