Who are the trustworthy, we think?

A representative Swedish sample was asked to judge the relative trustworthiness of people from different groups, characterized by several dimensions such as political views and reading habits. A significant similarity effect was found in each of the seven dimensions analyzed. For example, rightwing voters consider Social Democratic voters to be much less trustworthy than rightwing voters, and vice versa. Thus, perceived trustworthiness appears to decrease generally with social distance, for which social identity theory offers a plausible explanation. Moreover, people who are old and live in small cities are generally considered more trustworthy than young people living in big cities. The results suggest reasons behind discrimination other than those underlying taste-based and statistical discrimination.