Americans are closely divided on the question of whether most people can be trusted or whether you can’t be too careful in dealing with others; 45% of respondents in a Pew Social Trends survey say the former, while 50% say the latter. These responses have fluctuated very little during the four decades that survey research organizations have been asking this question, save for a period in the 1990s when measured levels of interpersonal trust dipped for a number of years. But since then, social trust has rebounded to roughly the same level it had been before the trough. Read More
Russell Heimlich is a former web developer at Pew Research Center.
