Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Trust and the Good Life
- 2 Strategic Trust and Moralistic Trust
- 3 Counting (on) Trust
- 4 The Roots of Trust
- 5 Trust and Experience
- 6 Stability and Change in Trust
- 7 Trust and Consequences
- 8 Trust and the Democratic Temperament
- Epilogue: Trust and the Civic Community
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Appendix C
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Trust and the Good Life
- 2 Strategic Trust and Moralistic Trust
- 3 Counting (on) Trust
- 4 The Roots of Trust
- 5 Trust and Experience
- 6 Stability and Change in Trust
- 7 Trust and Consequences
- 8 Trust and the Democratic Temperament
- Epilogue: Trust and the Civic Community
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Appendix C
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
This book was a long time coming and represents both a detour in my conventional research agenda and an evolution in my own thinking. Most of my writing has been on the United States Congress. In 1993 I published a book, The Decline of Comity in Congress, that linked the increasing incivility in Congress to a decline of trust among the American public. For that study, trust was a surrogate for a cooperative spirit and I gave little thought to any deeper meaning – even though it played a key role in my analysis.
The next year Bob Putnam invited me to a conference on social capital in the very pleasant surroundings of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Those invited could bring their spouses – and since this was our first trip away from home since we became parents, my wife and I were anxious to go. But I wasn't doing any work on social capital and so I had to come up with a topic rather quickly. Following the old maxim “write about what you know about,” I looked to the faithful trust question in the General Social Survey and wrote a paper linking faith in others to a whole range of desirable attitudes and behavior. And this set me on a detour from my traditional research agenda of focusing on the Congress.
I still had little idea of any deeper language. I got some good reactions to this paper, so I decided to pursue the linkages further.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Moral Foundations of Trust , pp. ix - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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