BMF Collaborative Project 9: How health conditions affect generalized and personalized trust

AISDL Team
aisdl_team@mindsponge.info

January 31, 2023

1. Project description

1.1. Background

The relationship between health and social trust is often explained in the direction of trust affecting health and not the other way around. In general, a higher level of social trust is considered a predictor of better health [1,2]. However, some studies suggest that this relationship is not straightforward but rather context-dependent [3-6].

People tend to become more cautious toward strangers when they are in a vulnerable state. This can be a link between physiology and psychology. Such a natural tendency may underline the aforementioned relationship.

1.2. Main objectives

The present study aims to explore how health conditions may influence the degree of trust.

The influence of health conditions is examined on two types of trust: generalized trust (toward other members of society in general, including strangers) and personalized trust (toward people that one has established personal relationships). Additionally, the moderating effect of recent illness experiences is investigated.

1.3. Materials

The research project will employ a dataset of 1237 urban adults in Cali, Colombia [7].

The research project will follow the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) [8,9]. The bayesvl R package will be employed for statistical analyses [10].

1.4. Main findings

People with better health conditions were found to have higher generalized trust, but this effect is lessened if they experienced recent illness(es) (see Figure 1).



Figure 1. Health status and recent illness experiences influence generalized trust

Health conditions, in general, did not have impacts on personalized trust; but if people experienced recent illness(es), there would be a positive association between health conditions and personalized trust (healthier people having more trust) (see Figure 2).



Figure 2. Health status and recent illness experiences influence personalized trust

2. Collaboration procedure

Portal users should follow these steps to register to participate in this research project:

1. Create an account on the website (preferably using an institution’s email).
2. Comment your name, affiliation, and your desired role in the project below this post.
3. Patiently wait for the formal agreement on the project from the AISDL mentor.

If you have further inquiries, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at aisdl_team@mindsponge.info

If you have been invited to join the project by an AISDL member, you are still encouraged to follow the above formal steps.

All the resources for conducting and writing the research manuscript will be distributed upon project participation.

AISDL mentor for this project: Tam-Tri Le

AISDL members who have joined this project: Minh-Hoang Nguyen and Quan-Hoang Vuong

The research project strictly adheres to scientific integrity standards, including authorship rights and obligations. We look forward to working with participants on this research project.

References

[1] Barefoot JC, et al. (1998). Trust, Health, and Longevity. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 21(6), 517–526.

[2] Schneider IK, et al. (2011). A healthy dose of trust: The relationship between interpersonal trust and health. Personal Relationships, 18(4), 668–676.

[3] Chan DKC, et al. (2017). Effect of human development on the relationship between generalised trust and health: An international cross-sectional investigation. Lancet, 390, S105.

[4] Hamamura T, Li LMW, Chan D. (2017). The Association Between Generalized Trust and Physical and Psychological Health Across Societies. Social Indicators Research, 134(1), 277–286.

[5] Jiang J, et al. (2020). Social Trust and Health: A Perspective of Urban-Rural Comparison in China. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 15(3), 737–756.

[6] Wang Y, Wai Li LM. (2020). Does your trust in strangers or close acquaintances promote better health? Societal residential mobility matters. Journal of Social Psychology, 160(4), 416–427.

[7] Martínez L. (2019). Trust, life satisfaction and health: Population data in mid-size city in the Global South. Data in Brief, 27, 104639.

[8] Nguyen MH, La VP, Le TT, Vuong QH. (2022). Introduction to Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics: An innovative method for social and psychological research. MethodsX, 9, 101808.

[9] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, La VP. (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. De Gruyter.

[10] La VP, Vuong QH. (2019). bayesvl: Visually Learning the Graphical Structure of Bayesian Networks and Performing MCMC with ‘Stan’. The Comprehensive R Archive Network. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bayesvl/index.html