​​The project contributes to recent debates on the erosion of trust in different types of social and political authorities. We take a life-span perspective and extend our previous research focused on how people from early adolescence to middle adulthood conceptualize, perceive sources of, and form trust in authorities. The proposed project will complement and advance our previous findings in three ways to cover the whole life span: (1) We will obtain comparable qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (a survey with an experimental part) data from late adults (aged 50-64 and 65+). (2) We will develop and apply an age-appropriate innovative methodology, based on individual interviews with structured and unstructured components, to study the formation of trust in authorities among 4- to 9-year-olds. (3) We will re-analyze our previous data in order to identify age differences in the trust-building process. The results will help to understand factors that promote individuals’ trust and distrust in authorities from preschool to old age.

Sustainable Development Goals

Masaryk University is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to improve the conditions and quality of life on our planet by 2030.