Why trust? A mixed-method investigation of the origins and meaning of trust during the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark
Professor Merlin Schaeffer has contributed the article ‘Why trust? A mixed-method investigation of the origins and meaning of trust during the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark’ to the British Journal of Social Psychology.
The article is written in collaboration with Associate Professor Séamus A. Power and Professor Thomas Morton, both from the UCPH Department of Psychology, as well as Professor Jan P. Heisig, Berlin Social Science Center, and then Student Assistant Rebecca Udsen.
The article examines the importance of trust in disease management. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Denmark seemed to embody the understanding. Characterising the Danish response were high levels of public compliance with government regulations and restrictions coupled with high trust in the government and other members of society.
In the article, the authors first revisit prior claims about the importance of trust in securing compliant citizen behaviour based on a weekly time-use survey involving a total of 2,816 participants that was conducted during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in April-May 2020. Analysis of activity episodes, rather than merely self-reported compliance, both reconfirms the importance of institutional trust and nuances prior suggestions of detrimental effects of trust in other citizens.
The survey-based results are further augmented through thematic analysis of 21 in-depth interviews with respondents sampled from the survey participants. The qualitative analysis reveals two themes, the first focusing on trust in others in Danish society and the second on the history of trust in Denmark. Both themes underline that institutional and social trust are complementary and not countervailing.
Finally, the article discusses how the analysis suggests pathways towards an increased social contract between governments, institutions and individuals that might be of use during future global emergencies and to the overall functioning of democracies.
Read the full article (open access): Why trust? A mixed-method investigation of the origins and meaning of trust during the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark
The journalistic UCPH article on the study: Trust hardly makes us careless and complacent in crisis situations