Existential insecurity and trust during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Germany

ABSTRACT

In many, but not all situations it is easier to be trusting from a position of security. This paper addresses trust’s relationship with perceived insecurities induced by the coronavirus pandemic. Looking at social trust (trust in strangers) and institutional trust (trust in the government and in the public health-care system), we explore whether individuals’ trust is negatively or positively associated with economic fears and health fears. Using panel data from Germany for 2020, 2021, and 2022 we find in cross-sectional analysis that institutional trust – but not social trust – is strengthened by health fears and weakened by economic fears. Longitudinal analysis shows that changes in health fears – but not in economic fears – increase social and institutional trust. Our results indicate that only health fears are threatening enough to suspend the otherwise tight-knit syndrome of security and trust.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• social trust
• trust in the government
• trust in the health-care system
• existential insecurity
• health fears
• economic fears

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The health-care system (German: Gesundheitssystem) is a term commonly used in the German language. It encompasses all persons, organisations, facilities, regulations, and processes that serve to promote health, prevent disease, and provide treatment, rehabilitation and care.

2 In international surveys generalised social trust is usually captured by a question asking about trust in most people (Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?) or about people one meets for the first time. Both variables have been shown to empirically capture a common latent factor of generalised trust that is distinct from particularised and identity-based trust (Freitag & Bauer, 2013).

Additional information

Funding

The data collection and research was part of the project ‘Values in Crisis: A Crisis of Values? Moral Values and Social Orientations under the Imprint of the Corona Pandemic’, funded by Volkswagen Foundation, grant number 99/127. We would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes on contributors

Jan Delhey

Jan Delhey is Professor of Macro-Sociology at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg. He is board member of the International Society of Quality of Life Studies (ISQOLS) and has been co-editor of the Journal of Trust Research and the Journal of Happiness Research. His research interests include individual well-being and quality of life, trust and social cohesion, and the transnational integration of Europe. He has published widely-cited articles on trust e.g. in the American Sociological Review, European Sociological Review, and European Societies.

Leonie C. Steckermeier

Leonie C. Steckermeier is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg. Her research interests include subjective well-being, inequality, trust, and autonomy. Her work has been published in Social Indicators Research, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, and Government Information Quarterly.

Klaus Boehnke

Klaus Boehnke is a Professor of Social Science Methodology at Constructor University in Bremen. He was President of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) from 2016-2018. His research focusses on processes of political socialization and intergenerational value transmission. He has published in many leading sociology and psychology journals, among them Science, the American Journal of Sociology, and the Journal of Personality.

Franziska Deutsch

Franziska Deutsch is University Lecturer for Socio-Cultural Change and the Individual at Constructor University and Academic Coordinator at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). She is also a PI at the Research Training Group “Social Dynamics of the Self”. Her research addresses topics like political culture, values and value change, and political participation, published in journals such as Global Policy, Frontiers in Sociology, and the British Journal of Political Science.

Jan Eichhorn

Jan Eichhorn is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. He is also the research director of the think tank d|part, coordinating projects focused on political participation. His research focusses on public attitudes and behaviour, especially in relation to political engagement and economic issues. His research has been published e. g. in European Sociological Review, Social Indicators Research, and Journal of Happiness Studies.

Ulrich Kühnen

Ulrich Kühnen is a Professor of Psychology at Constructor University in Bremen and Academic Chair at Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). He is spokesperson of the Research Training Group “Social Dynamics of the Self” funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation). His research addresses the mutual constitution of culture and the self and has been published in various psychological journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Christian Welzel

Christian Welzel, member of the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), is the Political Culture Research Professor at Leuphana University in Lueneburg. He is also President emer. and Vice-President (director of research) of the World Values Survey Association. His research focuses on human empowerment, emancipative values, cultural change and democratization. His forthcoming book (with Stefan Kruse, Lennart Brunkert and Steven Brieger) is titled “Cool Water: The Geo-Climatic Origin of Western Exceptionalism” (preprint accessible at www.coolwatereffect.com).