# When Do People Trust Their Social Groups?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.05270 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05270/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Where Do People Tell Stories Online? Story Detection Across Online Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09675/) (2023)
- [Persuasion at Play: Understanding Misinformation Dynamics in Demographic-Aware Human-LLM Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02038/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Trust facilitates cooperation and supports positive outcomes in social groups, including member satisfaction, information sharing, and task performance. Extensive prior research has examined individuals' general propensity to trust, as well as the factors that contribute to their trust in specific groups. Here, we build on past work to present a comprehensive framework for predicting trust in groups. By surveying 6,383 Facebook Groups users about their trust attitudes and examining aggregated behavioral and demographic data for these individuals, we show that (1) an individual's propensity to trust is associated with how they trust their groups, (2) smaller, closed, older, more exclusive, or more homogeneous groups are trusted more, and (3) a group's overall friendship-network structure and an individual's position within that structure can also predict trust. Last, we demonstrate how group trust predicts outcomes at both individual and group level such as the formation of new friendship ties.