You Talkin' To Me? The Effect of Communication Barriers on Trust in Diverse Societies

Abstract

A large body of research has found that diverse societies tend to suffer from lower levels of social trust, but the reasons for this trust deficit are still not fully clear. In this thesis, I contend that communication barriers between ethnic groups who speak different languages could be one reason for this effect. Second, I consider whether groups who speak partly-intelligible languages suffer less of a trust deficit compared to those whose languages are completely unintelligible. Using large-N datasets from the European Union and former Yugoslavia, I find that communication barriers are indeed linked to lower trust. However, the effect of speaking partly-intelligible languages is less clear. While one study found that this led to a reduced trust deficit as expected, the other produced ambiguous results. The experiment design proposed towards the end of the thesis offers a way of resolving this uncertainty. Show more