The Changing Importance of Competence Generationally: Developing Trust, Online and Offline

Generalized trust has reached new lows in America, with young Americans now trusting the least. This complicates the process of interacting with new people, which formerly contributed to trust. The present study thus tested whether networked modes of social contact and social learning might add to interpersonal competence and generalized trust. Responses to a national web survey were matched to US Census percentages for sex, race, ethnicity, age, and region. The sample resembles the US population demographically and is theoretically large enough to represent it (N = 1500). Data were analyzed using SPSS and PROCESS. Diverse contact in person was unrelated to trust in general and only contributed to trust for respondents 70 or older when particular age groups were considered. Interpersonal competence, on the other hand, contributed to trust overall, and for respondents 18–29, 40–49, and 50–59. Feeling capable of interacting with new people in person has become more important than the contact itself for trusting, as a way of generating numerous diverse interactions over time. Networked efforts of sociability and posting behavior were also related to trust here. Posting related to trust for respondents 18–29, while sociability contributed to trust for those 18–29, 30–39, and 50–59. Social presence (i.e., sensing immediacy and intimacy in networked settings) related to trust overall and for those 18–29 and 40–49. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) competence contributed to trust indirectly, by way of social presence, and the indirect effect was the largest for the youngest users surveyed. CMC competence had a larger association with interpersonal competence for younger generations as well, which became a second indirect path to trusting. Different age groups draw trust from different places, and trust interventions should also differ with age.