Educational attitudes and distrust between college graduates and non-college graduates: Social trust theory approach

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K20924
• Project/Area Number (Other): 18H05727 (2018)
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund (2019); Single-year Grants (2018)
• Review Section: 0108:Sociology and related fields
• Research Institution: Rikkyo University (2022); The University of Tokyo (2018-2021)
• Principal Investigator: OSAKI Hiroko 立教大学, 社会学部, 特任准教授 (10825897)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-08-24 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 学歴間不信 / 階層間不信 / 階層間不信の非対称性 / 分断 / 機会格差

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study analyzes data from a web-based survey experiment conducted on Japanese men and women aged 25-64, and finds that there is a distrust between university and non-university graduates, as well as a more general "distrust between classes" that includes new social strata such as employment status and family formation. In addition, the results show that all of these stratification distrusts are asymmetric, and that in terms of trust in others, low-ranked individuals do not distinguish between high and low-ranked individuals to a large extent, while high-ranked individuals clearly distinguish between high and low-ranked individuals, and have less trust in the latter. Furthermore, it was shown that the acceptance of disparity may amplify distrust between the two groups.

Free Research Field

計量社会学，信頼，社会意識

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究では，近年の日本社会で懸念される社会分断について，主に階層研究と信頼研究の視点からアプローチし，学歴を含む社会階層において，異なる階層の人々の間の不信の存在とその非対称性を明らかにした．社会的意義として，社会分断の抑制という現代的課題にむけた実践的研究の方向性を示した点があげられる．また，日本社会における分断が主に，上層から下層に向けて生じている可能性を示し，日本社会の記述という点で学術的な意義があったと考えている．