The Relationship between the Congruence of Basic Values and Social Trust in Russia in Different Socio-demographic Groups

This paper presents the results of a theoretical review and empirical research, the purpose of which was to search and explain the relationship between the congruence of basic human values and the level of social trust in Russia. In the first part we discussed the definition of social trust and approaches to understanding and measuring basic values and their congruence. The value approach in this work was based on the theory of basic values developed by Shalom Schwartz, who identified ten basic personal values reflecting individuals’ goals and motives. The paper provides several methods for assessing the congruence of values, illustrated by the results of the research of S. Schwartz and A. Khaptsova, V. Magun and M. Rudnev. Further in the text of the study are presented the results of an analysis conducted on the 2016 European Social Survey dataset. To find the connection between the value congruence and the level of social trust, a Russian sample was used (2430 respondents, which were divided into socio-demographic groups by sex and age, level of education, total household income and type of place of residence). As a method for assessing the uniformity of values, a standard deviation of each of the ten basic values from the average in the group was used. The relationship between value congruence and social trust was tested with correlation analysis. The analysis allows us to conclude that the relationship between the congruence of basic values and the level of social trust differs in chosen socio-demographic groups. The research found out that the grouping criteria can change the strength and direction of communication between the investigated concepts. Thus, the work allowed us to make a suggestion for further research that the relationship between social trust and congruence of values can significantly differ at the level of socio-demographic groups, compared with the analysis at the national level which was primarily used before.