Faculty Sponsor: Professor Gooyabadi
Live Poster Session:
Time: May 1, 2026 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
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https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/97590204356
Olivier Hart-Vilain
Olivier is a Junior at Wesleyan University. He is a Neuroscience and Behavior major and an Informatics and Modeling minor through the Integrative Genomic Sciences (IGS) pathway. Olivier is a lab researcher in the Melón Translational Neuroscience Lab. His passion for understanding the subconscious underlying behavior fostered curiosity in how perception of others and their trustworthiness relates to support for welfare.
Abstract: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between social trust and perceptions of how the government should behave in regards to increasing, maintaining, or decreasing support of poor citizens of the United States. Current literature indicates a variety of nations in both Asia and Europe exhibit a positive relationship between social trust and support for welfare efforts, as well as broader government regulation (Wen, et al. 2022; Aghion, et al. 2010; Mewes, 2024). The question answered in this study is whether this relationship exists in adults living in the United States. This question is incredibly pertinent to understanding the effect of the United States’s social and political culture in which freedom and a minimization of government influence is dominant. It was found that this relationship does not exist in the United States, even when controlling for sex and perceived fairness of others. The implication of this finding is that people in the United States relate to each other in a fundamentally different way from citizens in a variety of other countries, perhaps implying a justification for welfare with a distinct ideological foundation.
OHV-QAC201-Presentation