UC Irvine

This dissertation found support for an alternative explanation of a country-level negative relation between income inequality and generalized trust, claimed in the literature as causal. In Study 1, it was found that the relationship between income inequality and generalized trust was confounded by cultural values. Specifically, in cross-country analyses, the cultural dimension of autonomy-embeddedness was negatively related to income inequality and positively to

generalized trust, and the cultural dimension of harmony-mastery was negatively related to income inequality. Moreover, it was found that within-country changes of embeddedness were positively related to generalized trust measured four years later. In Study 2, the theoretical model proposed in the literature to explain the observed relationship between income inequality and

generalized trust was not supported, which was consistent with the significant findings for the alternative model in Study 1. Implications for scholars and policy makers are discussed.