Trust and Tolerance in Times of Turbulence

The purpose of the project is to better understand how political and economic turbulence shapes people’s attitudes towards others. Such knowledge can help to avoid outcomes that increase intolerance, reduce trust and create social tensions. In times of economic integration and interdependence, and when politics is increasingly characterized by populism and polarization, crises of various kinds are bound to emerge. While economic and political consequences of such occurrences have been studied, it is still largely unknown what the social consequences are, especially how people’s attitudes to others, in the form of trust and tolerance, are affected. It is important to know what shapes these outcome variables since they constitute central parts of the “cultural fabric” of society, with direct implications for how well corporate and political governance works, how open people are to cooperating and transacting with others and, ultimately, what levels of life satisfaction people experience.