The effect of social conformity on interpersonal trust

Social conformity pervades in societies by affecting a wide variety of attitudes and opinions. In this paper, I study whether social conformity affects interpersonal trust attitudes. The empirical approach isolates a variable for common ethnic trust which is a characteristic of the ethnic social community. Under possible social pressure, individual trust attitudes are shaped by the community trust. In other words, social conformity accounts for a significant change in individual's probability of trust. This effect is causal as evidenced by an IV estimation.