Effects of urban residence on interpersonal trust and helping behavior.

Existing research suggested the hypothesis that urban residents exhibit less trusting and helpful behavior than nonurban residents, but residents of different places differ little in trusting or helpful attitudes or dispositions. Using willingness to be interviewed as a measure of trusting or helpful behavior, this hypothesis was largely confirmed in analyses of data from a series of surveys of representative samples of the adult US population between 1952 and 1972. However, the results also show that differences in trusting and helpful behavior (i.e., refusal rates) between places of residence have become pronounced only in the late 1960s. Finally, analyses indicated that differences in refusal rates over places and times were largely due to variations in reported crime rates, rather than in population size, density, and heterogeneity, which have been the focus of traditional urban social psychology. Methodological and substantive implications of the findings are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)