Modernization Syndrome and Trust: Interrelation in the Aspect of Intergenerational Characteristics

During the implementation of the RFBR grant on the topic "Intergenerational dynamics of culture: territorial aspect", the authors tried to assess the relationship between two sociological indicators: the modernization syndrome and trust (generalized, institutional, personal, group). At the same time, the operationalization of the modernization syndrome is the original development by one of the article authors. The information base of the study was a survey of 2,400 respondents of the Perm Territory, conducted on a representative sample in late 2019 – early 2020. The results of study give grounds to assume that the regional society is differentiated into groups with different levels of cultural modernization. A comparative assessment of intergenerational differences in the indicators of social behavior that we proposed revealed a multidirectionality of their relationship depending on the type of institution or social group in relation to which the level of trust is assessed. Generalized trust weakly depends on respondents belonging to a particular generation. At the same time, personal trust increases from generation to generation. The conducted research has demonstrated the existence of differentiation of society in terms of the modernization level of culture and its connection with different types of trust. The nature of these links is different for different types of trust. The indicator of cultural modernization shows its increase in each subsequent generation. The modernization syndrome has the greatest impact on generalized and personal trust, and its impact on the level of institutional trust depends on the object of trust. At the same time, in the future, the sensitivity of the scale measuring the generalized trust level should be increased, which will allow researchers to more accurately describe the nature of the relationship of this type of trust with the level of cultural modernization. The connection between the intergenerational dynamics of culture and different types of trust revealed in the study allows us to expect different rates of increase in the levels of trust depending on the objects of trust. The results obtained make it possible to investigate the impact of the process of cultural modernization on the social capital of society.