April 1, 2021
What’s Your Trust Factor?
In the early 1970s, half of Americans said that most people can be trusted, according to the General Social Survey and the American National Election Survey. In 2020, that figure dropped to less than one-third. The United States is the only established democracy in the world to see a major decline in social trust. Two-thirds of Americans say religious and nonreligious people generally are equally trustworthy, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey. Evangelical Protestants are more likely than other Americans to say religious people are more trustworthy than those who are not religious. Forty percent of evangelical Protestants
