Congratulations to Blaine Robbins for successfully defending his dissertation, "The Origins of Trust and Trustworthiness: A Mixed Methods Approach." The dissertation makes important theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to understanding the nature of trust. The term trust has been used broadly and loosely across the social sciences in several separate literatures, so Blaine begins by specifying the relationships between them and constructing a typology of forms of trust. This allows him to develop novel arguments about the different causal mechanisms underlying different types of trust, and will also provide a solid theoretical foundation on which others scholars can build. Methodologically, Blaine uses different methods to explore different aspects of trust, but the core of his contribution is the development of factorial surveys to test his main arguments. Empirically, he combines several existing data sources with data he collected himself to provide precise and systematic tests of a broad range of aspects of trust. Congratulations to Blaine on this impressive accomplishment.
Blaine has taken a post-doctoral position at UC-Berkeley.
Committee:
Jerry Herting
Ross Matsueda
Darryl Holman (GSR)
Edgar Kiser (chair)