Webinar in October 2024

A Conceptual Analysis of Trust (October 03, 2024)

In this webinar, Maria Uttenthal presents a novel conceptual analysis of trust. The analysis is interdisciplinary, as it acknowledges and combines influential conceptualizations from political science, psychology, and sociology. The author emphasizes diverging conceptual aspects as complementary and develop an argument for how they relate within different forms of trust. Concretely, Sartori’s conceptual guidelines are employed to systematically develop the concept along the ladder of abstraction. As the ladder descends, the author moves from a universal conceptual definition into the development of increasingly concrete subtypes within the realms of interpersonal and institutional trust. The resulting framework centrally exists beyond any particular school of thought, and thereby represents an important move toward multidisciplinary consensus around the meaning of this fundamentally important concept. [See full article text]

Maria Uttenthal recently obtained her PhD from the Hertie School, which was a comprehensive study of trust in democratic societies. Her research works towards building closer connections between quantitative research and systematic conceptual work in the social sciences. Alongside her PhD, she has taught Statistics, Mathematics, and Research Design. She holds an MSc in European Public Policy and a BSc in Economics from University College London.