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Social trust is at the center of democratic societies, but it varies considerably between individuals and cultures. Socioeconomic status has been identified as an important predictor of such variability. Although this association has mostly been reported for measures of socioeconomic status taken in adulthood, recent studies have found unique effects of harsh conditions experienced during childhood on social trust assessed decades later. Here, we report a series of three studies that provide further support for the importance of early childhood conditions in social trust. The first study revealed that higher childhood socioeconomic status was associated with greater social trust in a diverse sample of French participants (N = 915), even after adjusting for current socioeconomic status. The second study confirmed this result using data from the European Values Survey (N = 64,780, 45 countries). In both samples, our analyses revealed that adding childhood socioeconomic status significantly improved the fit of the model thereby providing suggestive evidence of the central role of this variable for explaining variations in social trust. Finally, the last study replicated this association using a behavioral measure of social trust (N = 60 in original study, N = 75 in replication study). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Childhood disruptive behaviors are highly prevalent and associated with adverse long-term social and economic outcomes. Trajectories of welfare receipt in early adulthood and the association of childhood behaviors with high welfare receipt trajectories have not been examined. Methods: Boys (n = 1000) from low socioeconomic backgrounds were assessed by kindergarten teachers for inattention, hyperactivity, aggression, opposition, and prosociality, and prospectively followed up for 30 years. We used group-base trajectory modeling to estimate trajectories of welfare receipt from age 19–36 years using government tax return records, then examined the association between teacher-rated behaviors and trajectory group membership using mixed effects multinomial regression models. Results: Three trajectories of welfare receipt were identified: low (70.8%), declining (19.9%), and chronic (9.3%). The mean annual personal employment earnings (US$) for the three groups at age 35/36 years was $36 500 (s.d. = $24 000), $15 600 (s.d. = $16 275), and $1700 (s.d. = $4800), respectively. Relative to the low welfare receipt group, a unit increase in inattention (mean = 2.64; s.d. = 2.32, range = 0–8) at age 6 was associated with an increased risk of being in the chronic group (relative risk ratio; RRR = 1.16, 95% CI 1.03–1.31) and in the declining group (RRR = 1.13, 95% CI 1.03–1.23), after adjustment for child IQ and family adversity, and independent of other behaviors. Family adversity was more strongly associated with trajectories of welfare receipt than any behavior. Conclusions: Boys from disadvantaged backgrounds exhibiting high inattention in kindergarten are at elevated risk of chronic welfare receipt during adulthood. Screening and support for inattentive behaviors beginning in kindergarten could have long-term social and economic benefits for individuals and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the origins of political authoritarianism is of key importance for modern democracies. Recent works in evolutionary psychology suggest that human cognitive preferences may be the output of a biological response to early stressful environments. In this paper, we hypothesized that people's leader preferences are partly driven by early signals of harshness. We experimentally elicited children's (Study 1) and adults' (Study 2) political preferences using faces controlled for dominance and trustworthiness and showed that early childhood harshness has an enduring effect on adult political attitudes. Importantly, this effect was further confirmed using self-reported extreme authoritarianism (Study 2) and by the analysis of the large database of the European Value Survey (Study 3). We discuss the potential political implications of this early calibration of leader preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]