Under what circumstances do young people develop trust towards unfamiliar classmates or people in general? What role does the demographic composition of a school class play in shaping young people's trust?
In a recent study, DSS researchers Andrea Wingen and Clemens Kroneberg (ECONtribute) investigated a previously neglected influencing factor: the extent to which girls and boys in a school class differ from each other in terms of their ethnic background. The study is based on the following argument: If demographic characteristics such as gender and ethnic origin are strongly linked in a school class, this promotes the formation of separate groups of friends along these lines. As a result, young people experience parts of their class as foreign and learn less to trust young people who are socially distant from them. To test this assumption, Andrea Wingen and Clemens Kroneberg analysed data from a survey of 26 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was conducted as part of the ERC project SOCIALBOND.
The analysis results show that young people without a migration background tend to have greater trust in unknown peers in their school year and in people in general. However, this is significantly lower when gender and ethnic origin overlap in the school class – i.e. when young people with a migrant background tend to be of a different gender than young people without a migrant background. For young people with a migrant background, this correlation cannot be demonstrated with the same clarity.
The results suggest that schools can help to create less segregated friendship groups by deliberately composing their classes in a certain way – and at the same time promote social trust among young people. These findings are now being followed up by an Emmy Noether research group led by Hanno Kruse (University of Bonn and ECONtribute).