Trust is widely acclaimed as a public good that enhances civic life, generates social capital, and lubricates the economy. n1 There is widespread agreement that trust (or, at least some forms of it) has declined dramatically in the United States over the past thirty years. Positive responses to the statement "Most people can be trusted" fell from 58% in 1960, to 37% in 1994. n2 Confidence in almost all political and social institutions has experienced a corresponding decline. n3 The portion of Americans who responded that "the government in Washington" can be trusted "to do what is right" most of the time or just about always fell from 76.4 % in 1964, to 28.9% in 1992. n4 The trust measured by the "most people can be trusted" statement does not exhaust the range of trust relationships that play a role in our [*806] lives. A number of observers have introduced a useful distinction between the personal, particularized, or "thick" trust characteristic of communal society with its intense and constant interaction among the same people, and the impersonal, generalized, or "thin" trust that grows up alongside it in modern societies with their proliferation of loose, distant, and secondary relations. In the world we inhabit, our thick trust in the loyalty of kin and friends is complemented by our reliance on the airline pilot, the restaurant staff, hospital personnel, and the other drivers on the road. Notwithstanding the decline in personal trust, our faith that we can count on things to work and on people to do their jobs is constantly replenished. Kenneth Newton characterizes this as a shift in social trust "from the thick towards the thin . . . . [P]ersonal trust between known individuals has been supplemented by impersonal or abstract trust, taught by education, enforced and monitored by public rules and agencies, and (perhaps) by the mass media."
