Trust, forgiveness, and peace: The influence of adolescent social identity in a setting of intergroup conflict

Following the signing of peace agreements, post-accord societies often remain deeply divided across group lines. There is a need to identify antecedents of youth’s support for peace and establish more constructive intergroup relations. This article explored the effect of out-group trust, intergroup forgiveness, and social identity on support for the peace process among youth from the historic majority and minority communities in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The sample comprised 667 adolescents (49% male; M = 15.74, SD = 1.99 years old) across two time points. The results from the structural equation model suggested that out-group trust was related to intergroup forgiveness over time, while forgiveness related to later support for the peace process. Strength of in-group social identity differentially moderated how out-group trust and intergroup forgiveness related to later support for peace among youth from the conflict-related groups (i.e., Protestants and Catholics). Implications for consolidating peace in Northern Ireland are discussed, which may be relevant to other settings affected by intergroup conflict.

Multiculturalism

Where multiculturalists have argued that shared multicultural values and multicultural policies may form the basis for national unity and secure the allegiance of minorities to the polity and its members, critics have suggested that multiculturalism fractures society and promotes commitments to ethnic in-groups rather than trust and solidarity at the societal level. Based on a review of existing studies, this chapter concludes that multicultural policies do not seem to make much of a difference for these aspects of social cohesion, but that insofar as they do have an impact, it seems to be positive. More importantly, multicultural values seem to have positive direct value effects, not only on out-group trust and solidarity, but also on trust and solidarity in the in-group. Thus, as argued in Chapter 4, multicultural policies are in some cases supported by concerns for equality, and there is furthermore no evidence that such policies are detrimental to the social basis for egalitarian redistribution. In fact, the evidence suggests that states can strengthen social cohesion by engaging in community-building based on liberal and multicultural values.

Considering the Long-Term Transformative Impact of Creativity Training on the Work and Lives of Teachers

The purpose of this study is to examine teacher perceptions of the long-term transformative impact of Piirto’s Creativity Model and personal creativity exploration on teachers. Creativity training has been part of Ashland University’s Talent Development program for over 20 years using Piirto’s creativity model. The course encompasses multiple models of creativity, including the Torrance Incubation Model and Creative Problem Solving; however, significant time focuses on teachers’ own creativity through activities such as thoughtlogs, a Meditation Day field trip, and a personal creativity project. This study examines alumni perceptions of personal creativity exploration on their teaching lives. Data were collected through surveys and interviews. Questions include course memories, perception of the course’s impact on teaching and personal transformation. Results show that the course models community and group trust, and teachers increased understanding and valuing of their own creativity and that of students.

The Influence of Trust on Creativity: A Review

Examining the trust-creativity relationship is important to promote creativity and organizational innovation. The goal of this study is to investigate how trust influences creativity by summarizing existing findings of diverse empirical studies. The impact of trust at different levels on creativity primarily manifests in three ways: (1) individuals' cognition- and affect-based trust has a positive effect on creativity together with the role of trust-derived perspective taking in creativity; (2) interpersonal trust helps enhance the joint creativity of an entire group via mediators such as team communication and commitment together with trust-evoked safety and the motivation to risk proposing, sharing, accepting or adopting uncommon ideas; (3) group trust has a positive, mostly indirect effect on creativity via mediating variables such as collaborative culture/climate and team communication. Potential implications and avenues for future research are also discussed.

GT-Bidding: Group Trust Model of P2P Network Based on Bidding

Due to the lack of trusted third parties as guarantees in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, how to ensure trusted transactions between peers has become a research hotspot. However, the open and distributed characteristics of P2P networks have brought challenges to network security, and there are problems such as node fraud and unavailability of services in the network. To solve the problem of how to select trusted transaction peers in P2P groups, a new trust model, GT-Bidding, is proposed in this paper. This model follows the bidding process of human society. First, each service peer applies for a group of guarantee peers and carries out credit mortgages for this service. Second, based on the entropy and TOPSIS method (Technology for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) approaching the ideal solution, a set of ideal trading sequences is selected. Then, the transaction impact function is used to assign weights to the selected guarantee peers and service nodes, respectively; thus, the comprehensive trust of each service node can be calculated. Finally, the service peer is verified using feedback based on the specific confidence level, which encourages the reputation of the service and its guarantee peers to update. Experiments show that GT-Bidding improves the successful transaction rate and resists complex attacks.

An Examination of Social Capital in Outdoor Orientation Programs

Social capital offers campus recreation professionals a framework to conceptualize the impacts of outdoor orientation programming (OOPs). Using data from The Outdoor Orientation Benchmarking Survey (TOOBS), researchers explored results of participants’ ( n = 1,154) responses to two constructs conceptually related to social capital: group trust and network closure. Researchers used factor analysis to examine the psychometric properties of TOOBS, finding group trust and network closure represented different aspects of social capital. Results of the study confirms trust and network closure are related, yet unique aspects of the social capital construct. The results provide an empirically-supported measure for evaluating social capital in outdoor orientation programs.

Out-Group Trust of the Russians in Multicultural Regions of Russia: the Role of Values and Intercultural Contacts

Objectives. The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship of values and intercultural contacts with intergroup trust among the Russian ethnic minority in two multicultural regions of Russia — the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania (RNO-A), the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR). Background. The study of out-group trust is important for multicultural societies. Out-trust contributes to the harmonization of intercultural relations, overcoming unstable social interactions and leads to important public benefits, including personal and social well-being. However, in Russia, trust was studied among the ethnic majority and in the context of acculturation problems. Study design. We conducted a socio-psychological survey. Data collection took place in towns and villages of North Ossetia-A and KBR, where the Russians live compactly. We used the “snowball” method. Respondents received blank questionnaires, completed them and returned them to the researcher. Participants. The sample included 593 Russian respondents. In RSO-A, the sample included 291 re¬spondents (29% of men, average age M=44,6); in KBR the sample included 302 respondents (36% of men, average age M=42,7). Measurements. We used Personal Values Questionnaire — Revised (Schwartz), the Yamagishi scale of trust, the scale of intercultural friendship contacts from the Mutual Intercultural Relations in Plural Societies project (MIRIPS). Results. The results showed that in RNO-A, Openness to change values, Conservation values were positively associated, and Self-Enhancement values were negatively related to out-group trust through intercultural contacts only. Intensive intercultural contacts of Russians also moderated the positive relationship between Openness to change values and out-group trust. In KBR, Self-Enhancement values had direct and indirect (through intercultural contacts) negative effects on out-group trust only. Intercultural contacts also moderated the negative relationship between Self-Enhancement values and out-group trust. Conclusions. In general, the results showed that the characteristics of the sociocultural context determine the significance of different values for out-group trust. In the situation of favorable intercultural relations and in “the close” religious context (RNO-A), if the Russians interact intensively with the dominant ethnic group representatives, then their values focused on the self-direction thought and action, openness to the world increase out-group trust. In “the distant” religious context in the situation of interethnic tension (KBR), if the Russians interact intensively with dominant ethnic groups representatives, then their values of achievement, power, “preserving their own face” reduce out-group trust.

Can general and particularistic types of trust mix? Advancing the trust (dis-) continuity debate in a Chinese context

PurposeWe challenge the discontinuity (also called incompatibility) hypothesis of generalized and particularistic trust, suggesting that the two types of trust are incompatible. This view is problematic because if so, it remains unclear, for instance, how communities scoring high in particularistic trust can ever develop further when transferring trust to spheres outside the community is not an option. In this research, we explore the potential permeability of different types of trust in an emerging market context using the case of China.Design/methodology/approachUsing a purposeful sampling technique, we gathered data among Chinese professionals (n = 290) in the Jingjinji Metropolitan Region in Tianjin. We analyzed the data by performing structural equation modeling.FindingsAs we identify interdependencies between generalized and particularistic types of trust, our results speak in favor of the continuity hypothesis. We find that the more people trust other people from an outside group (out-group trust), the less they trust quasi-familiar others (in-group trust). Further, in-group trust increases once the environment urges people to engage in informal network (guanxi)-based transactions.Originality/valueAdvancing the common view of China being a typical low-trust society, in which distrust in strangers (outsiders) prevails, we find a recent trend of an increase in general trust, which might lead to increases of out-group and in-group trust alike. Contrary to the wide spread idea that guanxi is declining in the present day, we find guanxi to be persistent.