Researchers claiming trust decline may be biased by their own urbanizing life changes.

Evidence

A similarly widespread thesis, however, asserts that increasing urbanization has produced more extensive interactions with people as compared with earlier small-town life. The truth of the latter thesis seems especially evident to the vast number of people who have moved from small to larger communities or who have prospered in ways their parents never knew. This number probably includes many, maybe even most, of the academic and other researchers who claim that generalized trust is in decline. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 800

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the sociology of sociologists — how researchers’ personal migration experiences may shape their grand claims about trust decline.