You Talkin' To Me? The Effect of Communication Barriers on Trust in Diverse Societies
type: CreativeWork
description: A large body of research has found that diverse societies tend to suffer from lower levels of social trust, but the reasons for this trust deficit are still not fully clear. In this thesis, I contend that communication barriers between ethnic groups who speak different languages could be one reason for this effect. Second, I consider whether groups who speak partly-intelligible languages suffer less of a trust deficit compared to those whose languages are completely unintelligible. Using large-N datasets from the European Union and former Yugoslavia, I find that communication barriers are indeed linked to lower trust. However, the effect of speaking partly-intelligible languages is less clear. While one study found that this led to a reduced trust deficit as expected, the other produced ambiguous results. The experiment design proposed towards the end of the thesis offers a way of resolving this uncertainty.
abstract: A large body of research has found that diverse societies tend to suffer from lower levels of social trust, but the reasons for this trust deficit are still not fully clear. In this thesis, I contend that communication barriers between ethnic groups who speak different languages could be one reason for this effect. Second, I consider whether groups who speak partly-intelligible languages suffer less of a trust deficit compared to those whose languages are completely unintelligible. Using large-N datasets from the European Union and former Yugoslavia, I find that communication barriers are indeed linked to lower trust. However, the effect of speaking partly-intelligible languages is less clear. While one study found that this led to a reduced trust deficit as expected, the other produced ambiguous results. The experiment design proposed towards the end of the thesis offers a way of resolving this uncertainty.
author: Kumove, Michael
language: en_AU
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:27Z
provider: Australian Catholic University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian Catholic University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/255019