A drama: a society of mistrust?

Summary There is a French paradox: private happiness and public unhappiness. While the French say they are relatively satisfied with their private lives and with family and community solidarity, they express a great deal of mistrust towards the rest of society. They regularly declare themselves more pessimistic about their collective destiny and their taste for living together than citizens of other developed countries. How can such pessimism be explained in a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world? Recent research in the social sciences, economics and medicine on the causes of well-being provides a convincing and well-founded answer: well-being depends above all on the quality of social relations. However, the French suffer from a profound lack of cooperation and reciprocity. They distrust others, but also their institutions, justice, parliament, trade unions, or even companies, competition and the market, much more often than citizens of most other developed countries. They also say they suffer from conflictual and hierarchical relationships, whether at school, in their companies, or in their relationship with public institutions. This mistrust has a considerable economic and human cost (.).