2015/11/01 by Maria Abascal, Delia Baldassarri · 287 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Social Capital and Networks #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Diversity (politics) #Ethnic group #Social capital #Race (biology) #Sociology #Cultural diversity #Sorting #Inequality #Association (psychology) #Social psychology #Demographic economics #Psychology #Gender studies #Social science #Economics #Anthropology
paper · doi:10.1086/683144
published in American Journal of Sociology 121(3), 722-782 (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 2015/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
According to recent research, ethnoracial diversity negatively affects trust and social capital. This article challenges the current conception and measurement of "diversity" and invites scholars to rethink "so-cial capital" in complex societies. It reproduces the analysis of Putnam and shows that the association between diversity and self-reported trust is a compositional artifact attributable to residential sorting: non-whites report lower trust and are overrepresented in heterogeneous communities. The association between diversity and trust is better explained by differences between communities and their residents in terms of race/ethnicity, residential stability, and economic conditions; these classic indicators of inequality, not diversity, strongly and consistently predict self-reported trust. Diversity indexes also obscure the distinction between in-group and out-group contact. For whites, heterogeneity means more out-group neighbors; for nonwhites, heterogeneity means more in-group neighbors. Therefore, separate analyses were conducted by ethnoracial groups. Only for whites does living among out-group members--not in diverse communities per se--negatively predict trust.