International Personal Trust
By international personal trust is meant the extent to which the citizens of different nations trust each other (as
opposed to the extent to which their governments trust each other, or citizens of one country trust the government of
another). If there is any merit in the argument that modern society is shifting from thick, personal trust, towards thin,
abstract or impersonal trust, we would expect signs of increasing trust between the citizens of different nations.
According to the Eurobarometer Surveys this is indeed the case (Table 8.5). Trust between citizens of the nine EU
member states increased in every case between 1976 and 1993. The increases were not large—although on a fourpoint
scale, many are not trivial either—but they are consistent across all nations in the survey.