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INTRODUCTION
Although Europeans may not have previously been aware of the extent to which their nations' fates were interwoven, the recent financial crisis made this interconnection extremely obvious. Within the European Union (EU) and beyond, countries' destinies are both politically and economically aligned with one another. Despite this alignment, political elites have had serious difficulties legitimizing policies to stabilize the European currency. European nations seem increasingly unwilling to act in solidarity with one another, at least not in the form of high payments.
The legitimacy of supranational policy as well as European integration - which does not only include EU members - is strongly linked to peoples' mutual perceptions of one another. Genna (2009) has shown that individual support for European integration depends, in part, on the level of trust for other member states; he argues that trust in another nation is one attribute of an out-group's positive image, because positive images highlight commonalities with members of out-groups and thereby generate trust (Genna, 2009, p. 217f.). In addition, Kleiner (2012) has shown that common cultural values lead to mutual trust between nations; however, she argues that trust is not an attribute of a positive image, but rather is derived from the image. These findings, however, do not answer the reciprocal question of whether cultural distance automatically leads to a decrease in international trust and therefore a loss of support for European integration.
Trustworthiness is one of the most valued human characteristics (Andersen, 1968) and is a very central dimension of social relationships. If trust is defined as the belief that expectations will be fulfilled, or at least not intentionally violated, then trust in nations can be defined as the belief that the other nation's (future) behaviour towards the focal nation is not meant to exploit the in-group's vulnerability or harm the group in any other way . In fact, empirical studies show that trustworthiness is a more demanding criterion of intergroup relations than other attitudes and that the level of trust determines out-group behavioural tendencies (Tam et al , 2009). Given these findings about the importance of trust, it is not surprising that governments spend uncounted millions attempting to create the impression that their society deserves trust (Anholt, 2010).
This article argues that cultural...