The Compassionate Instinct

Trust is an intrinsic part of human nature—the foundation of healthy psychological development, established in the bond between infant and caregiver, a process facilitated by the hormone oxytocin.

Trust is most simply defined as the expectation that other people’s future actions will safeguard our interests. It is the magic ingredient that makes social life possible. We trust others when we take a chance, yielding them some control over our money, secrets, safety, or other things we value.

People trust other people when they hire a babysitter, drive their cars, or leave the house unarmed. And we must also trust large organizations, like schools and businesses, for modern society to function. People trust institutions when they dial 911, take prescription medicines, and deposit money in the bank. Without trust, we would be paralyzed, and social life would grind to a halt.

When honored, trust promotes feelings of goodwill between individuals, which in turn benefits community. Researchers Robert Sampson, Steve Raudenbush, and Felton Earls have shown, in a study based on interviews with thousands of people across hundreds of Chicago neighborhoods, that, other things being equal, neighborhoods where residents trust one another have less violence than those where neighbors are suspicious of one another. A 2008 Pew Research Center study discovered that in nations where “trust is high, crime and corruption are low.”

Trust helps the economy. Economists Armin Falk and Michael Kosfeld have shown that when performing tasks for others, an atmosphere of distrust hurts individuals’ motivation and accomplishments and probably increases the cost of doing business. Other research by Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer has found that countries whose citizens trust each other experience stronger economic growth.

Trust is also essential to democracy, where people must be willing to place political power in the hands of their elected representatives and fellow citizens. Without trust, individuals would be unwilling to relinquish political power to those with opposing viewpoints, even for a short time. They would not believe that others will follow the rules and procedures of governance or voluntarily hand over power after losing an election. If that trust declines, so does democracy.

Community, economy, democracy: once we recognize the role of trust in each of them, we can appreciate why declines in trust can be so damaging to society.

WHAT DRIVES MISTRUST?

From that perspective, falling levels of trust are an ominous sign for American society. But why has trust been declining in the United States for so long?

Some researchers, such as Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam, have argued that this rise of distrust reflects profound generational shifts. Americans born roughly between 1910 and 1940 were a particularly civic and trusting generation, these researchers claim, forged in the crises of the Great Depression and World War II—crises that required people to rely on one another and band together. Government dealt with these crises effectively through New Deal programs and military victory over the Axis powers, winning the confidence of its citizens.

That generation is now dying out, replaced by younger people who, according to this theory, are progressively less trusting (starting with baby boomers, whose slogan allegedly was, “Don’t trust anyone over 30”). In fact, a series of focus groups, conducted in 2001 by Harvard University’s GoodWorks Project, revealed an “overwhelming” distrust of politicians, the political process, and the media among the teenagers they interviewed. This generational decline implies that America’s waning trust in others will not easily recover.

But why have succeeding generations become progressively less trusting? There are a number of possible explanations, none of them definitive.

For starters, trust in others depends on how much contact people have with other people—and Americans today are measurably more isolated than previous generations. They have become less likely, for example, to have close friends or to be members of voluntary associations such as bird-watching groups and church choirs.

This is important, because people who belong to such associations tend to become more trusting as a consequence. Experiments, as well as experience, show that people trust people they know before they trust strangers—and so the more people you know, the more you trust. Researchers Nancy Buchan, Rachel Croson, and Robyn Dawes found that even when they created pseudo-groups by randomly giving study participants instructions on differently colored pieces of paper, the participants trusted members of their color “group” more than the others. The more memberships we have in groups—almost any group—the more trust we have in our lives.