I trust the reports, and I trust the data, but the trend has been pretty obvious, I'd wager, and predictable for some time now.
People in the suburbs increasingly migrate to cul-de-sac communities, which isolate them from the rest of the world, to make them feel safer, depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust.
Beyond that, the news is more and more pervasive, and more and more sensationalist than it's ever been. Every tragedy is made public, and the more grave and more egregious, the more media coverage it gets. People grow up believing that child abductions are the norm, and even likely, when the reality is that stranger abductions are less likely than they've ever been -- but the Amber Alert system (at least in the DC area here) broadcasts on highways, making it impossible to believe that a kid isn't abducted every two seconds.
Humans are built to be paranoid. Historically, the person who heard a strange noise outside their shelter and didn't react was mauled by a bear, or lion, or what have you, while the more alert human that took to defensive measures was more likely to survive. Having established our positions as apex predators, in cities this is far less likely to be needed, but our brains still seek danger patterns, cling to them, and those instincts aren't able to be quashed by rationality or statistics. We see something like the Newtown shooting and instinctively feel that all our children are in immediate danger, despite its actual unlikeliness. The media catches another school shooting and reinforces it even more in our brains that there is a very real danger, and breeds distrust and paranoia, triggering an instinct to be even more isolationist, and more paranoid, breeding more and more distrust, which further fuels the cycle for the next news article we see reinforcing our beliefs.
This isn't meant to blame the news, or humans, or any particular person at all, but the idea is that we should all at least attempt to be more data-driven, more pragmatic, and to try and find data that doesn't agree with our assumptions. It's harder than it sounds. In most humans, the brain simply rejects data that doesn't agree with its pre-formed hypotheses, but scientists are better equipped here than the average human, as we revel in data, enjoy being proven wrong, and strive towards better results, not just a reinforcement of the bad data we already believe.
I have to disagree with your characterization of people in suburbs. The only anecdote of trusting behavior given in the article was of a rural farmer in an isolated area - and it was given in contrast to people from urban New York or New Jersey coming up and being amazed about it.
Here's another hypothesis - tribal or rural cultures will be more trusting by nature. Human beings are naturally paranoid but NOT of each other. If you are competing with other species and the environment for survival, it doesn't make sense to view your own species as a threat. Indeed, it benefits your family or tribe if you all cooperate. However, in densely populated urban environments, your competition is all human beings. If you are metaphorically eaten or taken advantage of, it will be by another human. It's much less likely in a city that you will die because of exposure, or weather or a wild animal. Thus, because the threat is from people, you must be more wary of people.
I'm not super confident about this of course - it's probably both simplistic and wrong on a few levels, but I think whatever the answer is, it's not just that urban people are trusting and rural people are paranoid.
I may have overcharacterized, but I was specifically referring to those in cul-de-sac neighborhoods, not all suburbanites in general.
More traditional gridded suburbs, especially those with large communal parks, probably bely the behavior I described, but I'm mostly speaking intuitively on the matter, as I'm not aware of any studies.
There is existing data that strongly suggests corroboration here. Isolationist and/or segregated communities breed distrust of those outside the community. Cul de sacs are but a softer implementation of that segregation. Buying trends indicate that in most cases, cul de sac purchases are done with less diversity in mind -- whites buy in predominately white cul de sacs, minorities do the same; which just compounds the self-reinforcing price strata already existing within neighborhood communities.
That said, despite your low-brow dismissal, I'm not suggesting that cul de sacs are evil. They are very good at building close-knit, but very small communities. Kids that play in cul de sacs generally do so in plain view of everybody else, and with less traffic interruption, encouraging play and discouraging deviant behavior.
Cul de sac kids have a greater sense of trust with those within the immediate community, but at the expense of less trust for those outside that community -- just as isolated communities tend to do.
It is not a low brow dismissal, appealing to a HN meme doesn't save your position. :) A cul-de-sac is hardly an isolationist community. If anything you could probably go find data these people are more naive or trusting than the norm. Your position is just a rehash of the unquestioned assumptions of "suburbanites" that I think probably have a little but more to do, ironically, with "media conditioning" than even you might think.
My position doesn't apply to all, or even most suburbanites, nor is it entirely critical. I don't know why you're taking offense to it, especially offense that you haven't bothered to refute.
Cul de sacs are insular, and that's considered a selling point of them. I'll grant that they're not quite as extreme as gated communities, but that they exist for the purposes of insulating one from traffic otherwise associated with more frequented byways. That isn't a contrivance, it's their stated purpose. It shouldn't come as a shock that insulation from use as a thoroughfare would extend to insulation from outside contact, as that's the obvious result.
You seem to suggest those poor, sheltered suburbanites are al wrong. So should I have believed the guy at the bus stop when he told me he would sell a Rolex for $100 or the nice man at the gas station that asked for money for gas in his car with a long story, though he had no car in sight?
It's nice and hip to just imply people are not worldly but it may be that their distrust is justified.
You said some nice things about science ... But which set of assumptions really need to be examined here?
I didn't suggest that they were wrong. I suggested that their environment isn't conducive to fostering trust of 'outsiders'. I don't know if that's good or bad, nor do I know especially if it's better or worse to trust someone who just happens to live near you.
My thought is that a healthy distrust is perhaps the way to go, but that's a judgement on values, and shouldn't be relied upon as advice.
Putnam's data aside, we've seen the Contact Hypothesis show true in regards to homosexuals. Once a pariah, a generation of contact with homosexuals has trended towards acceptance.
Also interesting is that in Putnam's hypothesis, the last bullet relating to diversity indicates media influence -- "More time spent watching television and more agreement that 'television is my most important form of entertainment'".
I'm interested in Putnam's work though, but I'd like to see if other causes can't be seen as contributing factors. Thanks for the link.
People in the suburbs increasingly migrate to cul-de-sac communities, which isolate them from the rest of the world, to make them feel safer, depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust.
Beyond that, the news is more and more pervasive, and more and more sensationalist than it's ever been. Every tragedy is made public, and the more grave and more egregious, the more media coverage it gets. People grow up believing that child abductions are the norm, and even likely, when the reality is that stranger abductions are less likely than they've ever been -- but the Amber Alert system (at least in the DC area here) broadcasts on highways, making it impossible to believe that a kid isn't abducted every two seconds.
Humans are built to be paranoid. Historically, the person who heard a strange noise outside their shelter and didn't react was mauled by a bear, or lion, or what have you, while the more alert human that took to defensive measures was more likely to survive. Having established our positions as apex predators, in cities this is far less likely to be needed, but our brains still seek danger patterns, cling to them, and those instincts aren't able to be quashed by rationality or statistics. We see something like the Newtown shooting and instinctively feel that all our children are in immediate danger, despite its actual unlikeliness. The media catches another school shooting and reinforces it even more in our brains that there is a very real danger, and breeds distrust and paranoia, triggering an instinct to be even more isolationist, and more paranoid, breeding more and more distrust, which further fuels the cycle for the next news article we see reinforcing our beliefs.
This isn't meant to blame the news, or humans, or any particular person at all, but the idea is that we should all at least attempt to be more data-driven, more pragmatic, and to try and find data that doesn't agree with our assumptions. It's harder than it sounds. In most humans, the brain simply rejects data that doesn't agree with its pre-formed hypotheses, but scientists are better equipped here than the average human, as we revel in data, enjoy being proven wrong, and strive towards better results, not just a reinforcement of the bad data we already believe.