How Does External Conflict Impact Social Trust? Evidence from the 9/11 Attacks as a Natural Experiment

Social trust has enchanted social scientists due to its importance for both cooperation within societies and economic performance. This article provides a novel empirical study of whether external conflict affects trust. The possible ways that conflict could be related to trust are theoretically validated by two hypotheses on social group behavior. To identify the effect of external conflict on within-society trust, I interpret U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) trust data within a natural experiment with the terror attacks of 9/11 observed as the external conflict. Difference-in-differences estimations are in favor of the hypothesis that positive trust attitudes within a group are independent from external conflict.