Comparison of trust and social relations among students in Russian and Hungarian higher education

Abstract

Trust is the basis of social relations and the building block of every society. However, various societies have different levels of social trust, which is a consequence of various cultural dimensions’ as well as historic and economic variables’ interplay. The paper intends to explore the relation of social embeddedness and the level of interpersonal trust in two significantly different cultures – Russian and Hungarian. The results presented in the article are, on the one hand, the outcomes of secondary analysis of the data obtained from the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey, on the other hand, they also offer an insight into the still ongoing primary research on 585 students in business higher education in Hungary and Russia. The results indicate that although there are gender and other demographic variables based differences, social embeddedness and national culture (values, attitudes, behaviour) is of relevant influence on the level of interpersonal trust. According to the data presented, the Hungarians – despite being a low-trust nation – in general trust their peers more than the Russians do. However, if we distinguish between two forms of trust – thick and thin – the Hungarians then achieve significantly higher scores in thin trust only.