Social Trust, Trust in Muslims, and American Religion

Our social groups heavily influence our perceptions §of others. This book analyzes nationally §representative data collected by the Gallup §organization for Baylor University s national study §on the values and beliefs of the American public to §explore associations between religious traditions §and social/generalized trust. Denominational §differences in characteristics such as theological §emphasis, network permeability, and volunteering, to §name a few, might impact members perceptions of §those outside their own congregation or §denomination. Thus, differences in how trustworthy §members of separate religious traditions (e.g. §Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, and §Catholic) perceive others to be are expected to show §support for the bridging versus bonding social §capital thesis. The perception of the §trustworthiness of Muslims will be the second §dependent variable analyzed, also with respect to §religious tradition differences, to show whether §differences in the perception of this more maligned §group (compared to people in general) emerge as §well. The analysis will be performed in SAS with §OLS and multinomial logistic regressions.