Abstract
This study examined whether adolescents' transition to society is promoted by social trust, i.e., their perception of society as trustworthy. Social trust has been emphasized in terms of citizenship, and based on the assumption that membership in voluntary associations is a central element in the building of society. College and junior college graduates (N=8,336) ages 23-39 completed an on-line questionnaire in which social trust was measured by a sentence completion test. The findings first showed that social trust was not only the result of a transition to life in society, but also a cause of the transition. In addition, marriage, income, participants' college rankings according to the difficulty of entrance examinations, and social capital formed during college, were all positively related to social trust. It appears that the mechanism of social trust as it promotes transition to life in society should be clarified in further research.
